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WMD was nothing more than the main point of the public relations sales pitch behind the war. The irony of this is that so many rational, intelligent folks here on FR bought into a propaganda campaign that was aimed at the same soccer moms...

Frankly, I think you have a fair point here. It's clear to me that one reason for selecting Iraq as a target was that it was politically feasible using the "UN resolutions / WMDs" angle. But that doesn't mean that the US was wrong to assert that Iraq was in violation of the resolutions, possessed WMDs, etc. And it doesn't mean the critics are correct to say that the US was wrong to enforce the resolutions or that absence of evidence (of WMDs) is evidence of absence (which is what the critics seem to be saying, and pretending that they believe).

For civilians in the U.S., Iraq was never the biggest threat from such an attack.

Please pass along the elaborate methodology and mathematical equations by which you have calculated this Threatness-Level thing which you seem to think you have precisely measured for Iraq and all other nations.

So when some militant Islamic jackass from Yemen or Pakistan claims that the Mossad was behind the 9/11 attacks on the U.S., you'r telling me that the burden is on Israel to prove that they were not?

Red herring. There is no UN resolution requiring Israel to document lack of involvement in 9/11, which I'm aware of anyway. (You never know with the UN ;-)

You can't complain about "phony rules" in this context, since they were put in place at the behest of the U.S. after the first Gulf War.

First of all, I can complain about anything I want ;-) Second, I don't necessarily agree with the US's approach to things in 1991, which is what you seem to be talking about (setting up the sanctions regime, etc). Third, just because some rules were put in place "at the behest of" the US does not mean they weren't undermined, exploited, etc by countries like France. Fourth, the "phony rules" I was actually talking about were not from '91 in the first place, but specifically, last year's Resolution 1441 which passed unanimously based on the votes of countries like France which never had any intention whatsoever of enforcing it (that's what I meant by "phony"). and, so on.

The most current version of the events surrpounding the first Gulf War was that President Bush essentially laid out to Iraq all the elements of a U.S. response to a WMD attack ..

Ok so if I read you correctly you're agreeing with me that it was silly of you to claim the US would never put troops in proximity to a nation which it knew to have WMDs, since you seem to admit that they did so in '91. And by the way, don't you think the US issued the exact same kind of warning to Iraq in this war? So, your claimed reason for pretending to believe that Iraq had no WMDs ("the US wouldn't have put troops there if they did") is demolished.

[child molester example] You certainly don't let your children play there, but do you burn the guy's house to the ground? Maybe you do -- But if I were so certain that this was necessary, I'd be burning the police station to the ground, too.

Good idea! (In this context "police station" = UN, right?)

But that doesn't mean that the US was wrong to assert that Iraq was in violation of the resolutions, possessed WMDs, etc.

I'm not even arguing that point. My whole rationale here is that the U.S. not only must make a legitimate case about these facts (which we did, at least to my satisfaction), but that a very compelling case must be made that military action resulting in the overthrow of a government is the only means of dealing with the issue. The fact that this government felt a need to resort to such PR tactics to sell the public on the war tells me that they couldn't make a compelling case on the facts alone.

Those anthrax letters were mailed right here in the U.S., and the anthrax could just as easily have been produced here as anywhere else in the world. And the Tokyo sarin gas attack that was mentioned in another post (and prompted my response) involved a chemical agent that could have been produced anywhere, too.

And by the way, don't you think the US issued the exact same kind of warning to Iraq in this war? So, your claimed reason for pretending to believe that Iraq had no WMDs ("the US wouldn't have put troops there if they did") is demolished.

That's really my point. If the U.S. could issue this kind of ultimatum to Iraq to keep them from using WMDs on our troops, then the U.S. could have issued the same ultimatum to allow unfettered access to U.S. weapons inspectors without putting all those soldiers and ships over there. If Tom Clancy wrote a novel with a story line like this, he'd be out of business tomorrow.