How Jim Henley has the patience to still do this is beyond me. I’m not going to waste my time on the WMDers anymore, because they’re not arguing in good faith. For instance, in the comments beneath Jim’s post, some guy writes:
Of course, anti-war folk — if not Jim — were sometimes saying that one should not invade Iraq because Saddam might use WMDs, that, er, ahem, did not exist.
I’d sooner try to convert Osama bin Laden to Buddhism than “debate” this hack. Let’s see: Antiwar people didn’t think the war was justified to begin with, because “WMD” or not, Iraq posed no threat to the U.S.; they sniffed something mighty piscine in the WMD claims the administration made; they wondered aloud how anyone who believed said claims could be so gung-ho about hurling American teenagers at Baghdad. Oh, the contradictions!
Another comment, by Jon Henke, is even more demonstrative of bad faith, if read closely (emphasis mine):
For the record, I did cite numerous potentially exculpatory explanations like â€the documents could be (1) fraudulent, (2) in reference to legal chemical/biological programs (i.e., medical research, agricultural development, etc), (3) produced to deceive the bureaucracy and Saddam about the extent of operations.â€
I must ask Mr. Henke whether he noted such exculpatory possibilities prior to the invasion, or if he, like the rest of his brethren, screamed “DUAL USE! DUAL USE!” about every aluminum tube and batch of vaccine in Mesopotamia. If, in a moment of charitable weakness, you think the WMDers are/were merely misguided, remember “dual use,” the catchall lie behind this whole rotten enterprise. The war party denied the falsifiability of its WMD thesis by declaring all technology above the level of the wheel suspect. They consciously rigged Iraq’s wheel of fortune to always land on “Attack.” And for that, they deserve no presumption of honesty or, for that matter, innocence.