Iraqi WMD

I haven't had much to say about the Iraqi WMD issue lately, because I really don't have much to add to the general debate you can all tune into yourselves. Via Oxblog, however, I would like to point toward an old column by Robert Kagan about how pretty much everybody agreed that Saddam had chemical and biological weapons somewhere. I don't agree with everything Kagan brings up - I'm not sure the preo-1998 stuff is relevant, for example, as Clinton and Blair set out to destroy those programs during Operation Desert Fox. However, the fact remains that Saddam really wasn't cooperating with the inspectors, and that the UN reports did talk about stuff that was unaccounted for, and that the global consensus was that he was hiding something. This is, at the very least, a significant mystery.

The potential abuse of intelligence information by the White House is a separate issue, however. Before the war started I essentially accused Bush of making up both the al-Qaeda connection and the nuclear program, and everything I've seen and heard since then confirms those beliefs. If there has been systematic manipulation of this information by the Bush administration, that administration should pay serious consequences.

As far as what I think of the war itself, I supported it for several reasons, but also raised concerns about 1.) Its effect on the War on Terror and 2.) Our ability to handle the aftermath. I regard the jury as still out on both those points. In addition, Steve Gilliard is teaching me a lot about just how thin our combat forces are, and that raises another concern: the effect of this war on our security elsewhere. I have to question where North Korea would have moved forward on their nuclear program were we not so tied down elsewhere, and that is not a situation where Bush seems to have any plan at all.