bin Laden reminds people of 9/11 and the president who stood on rubble putting his arm around a fireman. Zarqawi reminds people of a failed, unjustified Iraq war.

Oh, you're talking loophole, Leo. Yes, the UN sanction violations gave Bush the loophole he needed to justify invading Iraq. And fvck the irony of Bush hiding behind an international body he doesn't even believe in in order to wage his war...it's not funny.

You don't actually mean that Bush's for true reasons for invading Iraq begins and ends at violated sanctions, right?

You're not following me. It is old news, Santorum is trying to present it like it's new.
Nope, this story is not sticking with anyone. (123 news stories about Santorum on GoogleNews, compared to 1100 regarding the Senate's withdrawl vote.) And if Bush's own network, Fox "News" is debunking it, then I'm thinking something stinks.

Cut and Run.

And the case for the final UN resolution came down to declarations that Iraq possessed and was persuing WMDs. We even showed pictures of where they were keeping them to the U.N.

Again, the violations justification for the war existed for 13 years. The possession argument is the one that made it happen. The Bush administration hitched their wagon to the wrong horse.

But all of that is moot. The Bush administration is essentially arguing against you, Leo, that these finds are of any great significance. After 3 years of ridicule on this exact issue do you really think they would hesitate to trumpet any affirming discoveries?

I've never considered giving Saddam repeated chances to comply and his refusal to be a loophole.

And still, even allowing that you are correct on the passage of the final UN resolution, it came down to Saddam saying that no one could come in to verify or debunk that very intelligence.

There is a theory - quite reasonable, really - as to why this is not being trumpeted. To summarize, the oil for food program investigation showed that China, Russia, and France were violating sanctions and selling arms to Iraq. There is evidence that the Russians specifically assisted in removal of WMDs and production capabilities in the two weeks prior to the invasion when the final UN resolutions were making the rounds. They did this because the equipment was Russian, Chinese, and French.

Talking up the evidence at present which points fingers at three security council members while at the same time needing their assistance with the Iranian and North Korean situations is not a good thing to do.

Spin? Perhaps. But not unreasonable considering what is know about the interactions of those three countries with Saddam.

Again, 500 is new to me. Last i had heard they had found two.

You're equating the method by which Iraq could have avoided the war with the argument by which Bush pressed for it.

The argument was not that we needed unfettered access so that we could find out whether Iraq had them and was developing them but that we needed unfettered access so that we could find what he had and was developing and destroy them.

In fact, you could argue that in an environment where the world intelligence community had determined that Iraq absolutely was in possession of a usable arsenal and persuing an active development program that it would be impossible for Hussein to have provided sufficiently full access to disprove these claims. Those already convinced would simply assume he was doing an unexpectedly good job of hiding them (kind of like what happened when we did go in and didn't really find anything).

The President should simply have said:

"In a climate where we are actively at war with a certain strain of Islamic fundamentalism the prevarications of Saddam Hussein can not be left sitting on our flank. For 13 years his unwillingness to comply with the terms ending the Gulf War in 1991 have been an irritant in the world of international diplomacy. A game that has cost his country millions of dollars and thousands of lives. But until 9/11 it was just an irritant. However, we now find ourselves at war with a certain strain of Islamic fundamentalism who have shown themselves willing to use any weapon to strike us. Similarly, Saddam Hussein has shown himself willing to use aggressive violence to achieve goals of territorial expansion and to fulfill fantasies of revenge. We can not leave Saddam Hussein on our flank as we prosecute this war against Al Qaeda, just waiting for the day when his capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction comes into alignment with both his desire to do us harm and the desire of Al Qaeda to destroy us. Either he must do everything in his power to show he poses no risk to us in our war with Al Qaeda or we have no other option but to ensure he is not in a powerful position to interfere with that war."

That, in my view, is the real justification for the war. That, in my view, is what the Bush administration didn't have the political balls to say to the American people, and that, in my view, is why they are stuck defending inept justifications for a just war.

Nice to see things back to normal around here. Welcome home, Leo. :)