Where Are All The W.M.D.s?

McG, I think probably partly because it's not my President and not my Secretary of State, I have a bit of a different take on that. Also because I dont have the same automatic trust in my (or anyone's) country's authorities as you have. One thing that strengthens me in my lack of a priori trust is that they often themselves disagree.

If the American president and the British PM and the Australian whatever-it-is-they-have say war is necessary right now, because Saddam might any moment pass on WMD to terrorrists who are going to use them to attack the West -- but the German, French, Finnish, Austrian, Greek, Belgian, etc presidents and PMs, the UN Secretary-General and the weapon inspectors themselves all say such immediate threat is not proven at all, and therefore continued inspections rather than war are the answer - well, then I can't easily say, like you do, I'd better trust the authorities on the matter, because which of these two groups are the authorities that I can assume to know best?

Which leaves me to make my own conlusions, in the end ... and, as you'll have gathered, they are different from yours. No offence ;-).

ELIZABETH, N.J. ?- President Bush, visiting a frozen pasta business in New Jersey on Monday to tout the tax cut passed last month, also took the opportunity to express his impatience with nagging criticism over the war against Iraq.

"This nation acted to a threat from the dictator of Iraq. Now, there are some who would like to rewrite history ?- 'revisionist historians' is what I like to call them," Bush said.

According to Bush, the revisionists are those who have called into question whether the war was justified inasmuch as the United States has not yet found weapons of mass destruction the president and others cited as one of the key reasons for going to war.

A senior advisor said Bush decided it was "time to go on the offensive" to head off the "growing movement over 'Where are the weapons?'"

"Congress has been a full partner [on the issue] going back a decade and has received information both in open and closed session," the aide said. "Go back to the speeches of 1998. Look at ... how many lawmakers said Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction. Do they think since the [United Nations] inspectors left, Saddam got rid of that?"

While Bush did not discuss the details of the hunt for weapons of mass destruction, the administration is stepping up efforts to find them, sending to Iraq former U.N. weapons inspector David Kay (search), now a special adviser to the CIA.

Kay will devise a strategy to search for such weapons and will work hand-in-hand with the 1,300-member military force known as the Iraq Survey Group (search), which is in charge of finding the weapons.

Meanwhile, critics continue to charge the intelligence community exaggerated its information on Iraq.

"If there was shading by the intelligence community to try to support what it perceived to be the policy of the administration or for whatever reason, it would endanger our security," said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Members of the Senate Intelligence Committee (search) announced this weekend that it will investigate charges of exaggerated intelligence. The House Intelligence panel has already announced its own inquiry. Hearings, probably behind closed doors, will include questioning of intelligence analysts about their work.

Though the aide said the president does not resent the idea of a congressional investigation, Bush asserted that the United States went to war to respond to a very real threat.

"Saddam Hussein was a threat to America and the free world in '91, in '98, in 2003. He continually ignored the demands of the free world, so the United States and friends and allies acted," Bush said. "And this is for certain: Saddam Hussein is no longer a threat to the United States and our friends and allies."

Centrist Democrats of the Democratic Leadership Council (search), who quibble with the president on many fronts, this time agree with Bush, saying the hunt for weapons of mass destruction is not cause for argument.

"If the Bush administration was wrong about Saddam's WMD program, so, too, was just about everybody else, including U.N. inspectors, the French, the Germans, the Russians and the Chinese, all of whom accepted prior evidence of such a program is beyond doubt," the DLC said in a statement.

Evidence or no evidence, many familiar with the intelligence say they believe Saddam voluntarily gave up his weapons after inspectors left in 1998.

"Some are suggesting, certainly, that he destroyed the weapons after 1998 or maybe even sooner," Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., ranking member of the House intelligence Committee, told Fox News. "It's just counterintuitive that he would have done that. His would have been the greatest intelligence hoax of all time, fooling every intelligence agency, three presidents, five secretaries of defense and the entire world into thinking he still had the weapons."

"This nation acted to a threat from the dictator of Iraq. Now, there are some who would like to rewrite history ?- 'revisionist historians' is what I like to call them," Bush said.

"And this is for certain: Saddam Hussein is no longer a threat to the United States and our friends and allies."