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I keep seeing and hearing people refering to "the" smoking gun, as if we will only find one instance of banned weapons. When this is all over we will find an entire arsenal of "smoking guns". So much so that if you put them all together they'd create a raging inferno.

Having said that, if by some unimaginable fluke, we never find any WMD, will it really matter? Look at what Saddam has done to his people and his country. I believe we have a moral obligation to confront evil wherever we find it. That alone is justification enough for this war.

"Having said that, if by some unimaginable fluke, we never find any WMD, will it really matter?"

Yes it will. The "company line" presented to us was that there were 2 major reasons to get into it with Saddam Hussein:

The first reason is that he is a present day Hitler, with hegemonic plans for the region, which of course we cannot allow because:

He is a proven, ruthless dictator, who will visit upon his conquests the same barbarity as did Hitler. To our credit, and no thanks to the UN, it seems we actually did learn from the appeasement mistakes of the pre WW-II decade.

He would control the mideast oil supply, which is unacceptable because of the economic damage he could do to us and the rest of world. Despite protestations to the contrary, oil is a huge factor in this incursion.

The second reason is that he has weapons of mass destruction, but if it is found that he does not, in the enormous quantities that we have alleged, then we have problems:

Our credibility comes into question if we feel the need, under the same reasoning, to repeat what we are doing in Iraq. Do not get me wrong. If the amounts that what we have discovered turn out to be legitimate chemical, biological, or radiological (CBR) substances, it is enough to create havoc. However, if the quantities discovered, that have made public to date, are true and accurate, then our allegations of the vast number of gallons, tons, however you want to measure them, are suspect.

I have maintained all along that if he did have CBR substances in the quantities advertised, he shipped them off to neighboring, like minded countries, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran, et al., to store for future use by them or their harbored or supported terrorist organizations. We certainly gave him plenty of time to do that while we fooled around in the UN. If that is the case, then to fulfill our stated reasons for initiating this invasion, then we have no choice but to invade those countries to eliminate their newly acqured WMD.

My point is that we oversold the WMD part, and undersold the hegemonic and economic part. Maybe that's the way we diplomatically had to do it. If that is the case, then those depicting the U.S. as a newly minted "Roman Empire" will have a legitimate sounding argument.