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I wasn't here at the time, but I have to agree that the lack of WMD sends a cloud over the entire Iraq liberation. The sad thing is, it was a SELF-INFLICTED WOUND!

Many, perhaps most, of us would have supported the war as a way to topple a brutal dictator who has menaced and murdered his own people, and who had given insufficient information about his disposal of WMD. It was President Bush -- and Secretary Powell -- who made the WMD themselves the issue with their statements about imminent usability of these weapons.

How are we ever going to get world support to take out, say, Iran or Syria for WMD if we can't pinpoint how our intelligence services screwed up so badly now. It would be a true tragedy if, having done the right thing by liberating Iraq, we are now in the position of the boy who cried wolf, never to be believed again when another horrific despot gathers the means to kill tens or hundreds of thousands of people at a time.

I pray that these weapons are found.

I pray that these weapons are found.

I believe quite strongly that they will be found.

Saddam got unmistakable signals before the official start of the war that the Americans were coming in. Just yesterday it was revealed by Gen. Franks that fiber optic cable control centers which had been left untouched in all the time since the end of Gulf War I and which controlled cables Saddam and his leadership team used for secure communication, were taken out in secret operations by F-18 pilots weeks before ground troops went in. That should have been a hint to Saddam that this time was different.

My point is that Saddam had ample time during the weeks of brinksmanship to read the tea leaves and realize that George Bush was dead serious and that American troops were coming in. No doubt once he knew his regime was toast, he turned his mind to figuring out how best to frustrate and embarrass us after the war. The #1 way, quite obviously, would be to destroy as much illegal weaponry as he could so that it looked like he never had the stuff in the first place. Most of it was probably destroyed in January or February.

Does this mean he got it all? No. We will find some of it. And while we may not find the bulk of what he destroyed just prior to the war, we will find the people who did the destroying. In dribs and drabs, as they realize it's in their self-interest to do so (which may not be completely clear to them yet), the weapons destroyers will help us put the pieces together and present to the world an irrefutable case that Saddam Hussein was in possession of illegal stockpiles of WMDs until as late as January 2003, and that the case against Saddam which Bush presented to the world was largely accurate.

And who knows, maybe one of these people will be able to tell us the location of an actual stockpile, or its remnants, from which good forensic evidence can be obtained.

It's still much too early to say we're never going to find this stuff.