The search for Saddam Hussein's alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction has been quietly abandoned, the Washington Post reports. [Registration maybe necessary] Here are a couple of excerpts from the article, and I want to discuss the third paragraph I'm quoting…
The hunt for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in Iraq has come to an end nearly two years after President Bush ordered U.S. troops to disarm Saddam Hussein. The top CIA weapons hunter is home, and analysts are back at Langley.
[…snip…]
Four months after Charles A. Duelfer, who led the weapons hunt in 2004, submitted an interim report to Congress that contradicted nearly every prewar assertion about Iraq made by top Bush administration officials, a senior intelligence official said the findings will stand as the ISG's final conclusions and will be published this spring. President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other top administration officials asserted before the U.S. invasion in March 2003 that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program, had chemical and biological weapons, and maintained links to al Qaeda affiliates to whom it might give such weapons to use against the United States.
[…snip…]
Bush has expressed disappointment that no weapons or weapons programs were found, but the White House has been reluctant to call off the hunt, holding out the possibility that weapons were moved out of Iraq before the war or are well hidden somewhere inside the country. But the intelligence official said that possibility is very small.
Okay, question: Is Bush disappointed for any other reason than that it means he and his men were spectacularly wrong about a key reason (some would say "main reason") we are now immersed in a war that is costing us a lot more American lives and dollars than anyone anticipated? I mean, isn't it good news in a way that it showed it isn't always necessary to go to war to disarm a tyrant? Sanctions and inspections, which were previously mocked as wimpy, ineffective tactics obviously worked a lot better than some had thought. Isn't that preferable to the conclusion that they couldn't possibly stop someone like ol' Saddam from getting nukes and passing around biological timebombs?
Isn't "he never had them" better news for us than "he had them but he smuggled them out to those al Qaeda affiliates"?