[MadIvan]

You are making a rather large assumption which is not bourne out by the facts: that Saddam is completely rational. I agree he has moments of rationality, or rather, cunning, but that is not consistent. Iraq was far smaller than Iran, yet Saddam attacked it anyway. If Saddam was rational, he would have realised what the response to the invasion of Kuwait would be, but he did it anyway. The whole thesis you put forward falls apart in the face of Saddam being less than rational, bourne of a capriciousness common among dictators.

His sons, I might add, are worse.

Regards, Ivan

[The Great Satan]

Your reasoning escapes me completely.

I predicted here months ago that any attack on Iraq would be a long time coming. To understand why, you have to have figured out what's really going on, which Steyn obviously hasn't.

According to the Vice President, in his MTP interview the other day, the evidence suggests that Saddam was behind 9/11. Well, either that is true or it isn't true: those are the only two possibilities. So, what if it's true? Would Saddam Hussein conduct an attack on the United States on the scale of 9/11 (at minimum, the destruction of the WTC and the Capitol), even behind the veil of terrorism, without some back-end security to deter US finger-pointing and the attendant retaliation? No. What would that back-end security have to be? Well, it would presumably involve WMD -- this is the very scenario that we are using to justify regime change. But he doesn't have nukes. To the best of our knowledge, Saddam has only three WMD at his disposal at the moment: anthrax, botulinum toxin and VX nerve gas.

What happened last year, right after sleeper agents armed with box cutters took down the WTC?

Have you figured it out yet?