Degraded mustard and sarin gas? I could pick up deadlier stuff at Walmart. How on earth is this a "Weapon of Mass Destruction"?

But you are right, good thing we invaded Iraq for the low, low price of hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands dead. We could never trust Saddam with that crap.

Calls into question? I found mustard gas when I was cleaning out my grandfather’s shop. As recently as the 80s that stuff was available in industrial shops and was used as a booby trap of sorts installed on safe doors.

I suppose it does ask a question, but other than, "why were they missed?", it doesn’t ask anything relevant and it certainly doesn’t warrant the WMD tag that had been used to justify the Iraqi invasion.

Bush and company promised mobile labs for biological agents, not the random shells that Saddam’s troops "misplaced" or "stole" from the 1980s.

First off, the DOD has had this information dating back to 2003 which leads me to believe, for whatever reason, the administration did not want this news out.

Second, Santorium is in a very tight race (projected down by 15%) in PA to the son of a very popular PA governor. I question his motives due to the timing.

Third, not even FoxNews is leading with this story. Their top story this morning is on forest fires.

To me, there is a distinct difference between "degraded" and the mobile chemical labs, facilities, and the "slam dunk" promise.

Out of curiousity, were these found were Sec. Rumsfield said "We know where they [WMD] are located, north of Baghdad...."

The Bush administration got scared enough to start a war over some degraded mustard gas? What a bunch of nervous nellies.

It's certainly no "smoking gun," but for those who didn't read the whole article, here's the key paragraph:

The weapons are thought to be manufactured before 1991 so they would not be proof of an ongoing WMD program in the 1990s. But they do show that Saddam Hussein was lying when he said all weapons had been destroyed, and it shows that years of on-again, off-again weapons inspections did not uncover these munitions.

From my point of view, it was never necessary to prove that Saddam actually was in possession of usable WMD to justify removing his regime by force. Unfortunately, the way the Bush Administration publicly argued for regime change made the existence of WMD the de facto sole justification of the invasion.

By repeatedly blocking weapons inspections and otherwise violating the terms of the 1991 cease-fire, Saddam had given us more than enough casus belli. The near-certainty with which every Western intelligence agency believed he had WMD added urgency to his removal, but he could have avoided that outcome at any point in the year-long run-up to the invasion by allowing free access by weapons inspectors.

I don't happen to have any articles in front of me, but I strongly recall reading about troops finding small amounts of degraded/worthless chemical weapons a long time ago - i.e., probably in 2003.

Is this even new news? I'm skeptical.

The interesting question was never "Do we in principle have minimal jus ad bellum justifcation?", which I'm willing to agree that we did have. Rather, the questions at hand were:
Is this war worth the likely cost it will have in American blood & treasure? What are the opportunity costs for such expenditures? Do we have sufficient reason to do this, if it means pissing off the vast majority of the world, including most of our allies?

Above all , the question was: do these reasons for war justify the must-invade-now-now-now-now drumbeat that the administration (& Congressional GOP) is marching us so hard to -- so hard, indeed, that it preempts sensible discussion of the above questions, and leads us to take over a big, messy country without getting our post-invasion plan into place?

A bit of leftover mustard gas goes no distance towards answering these questions in any way that shouldn't utterly & forever shame the current GOP leadership, were such men at all capable of shame in the first place.

Interestingly, Rush Limbaugh sort of referenced this a couple days ago before the story broke: its definitely been under the surface for a while. I can't for the life of me understand why the administration didn't come forward with this sooner. All very wierd. In any event, everyone knew and agreed that Saddam had chemical weapons before the Gulf War - frankly, I don't see how this is that big of a deal. It is newsworthy, however, and watch the mainstream media as it runs as far from this story as possible.

"It is newsworthy, however, and watch the mainstream media as it runs as far from this story as possible."

Even FoxNews isn't even touting this story. It has been "downgraded" to a bullet link under another story about Iraq.

From watching H&C last night on FoxNews, I thought they would run with this story all day. Especially since the typical necon authors / bloggers they consistently give air time to (Coulter, Maulkin, etc.) were ranting and raving last night, supporting Hannity, and screaming at the "left wing elite msm."

There seems to be something more. Or, perhaps FoxNews is trying to restrain itself so it won't have to "scrub" their transcripts like they had to with Bill O'Reilly last week.

The administration didn't come forward with it because it's embarrassing.

"we found some twenty-year-old corroded old useless artillery shells cached underneath a dirty canvas in the back of a warehouse! Saddam was obviously lying about WMDs! Thank goodness we invaded Iraq because those weapons inspectors weren't finding the handful of old, corroded useless shells hidden underneath an old canvas in bumf*k Egypt, err, we mean Iraq!" just isn't going to soundbite well, even on Rush Junkie.

greg

It's probably also worth noting that the UNSCOM team in the 90's in fact did not destroy all of Saddam's old, degraded weapons facilities. Instead, some of them were in such rotten shape that it would have put people at risk if the teams decided to do anything about them. They were then placed under UN seals and observed until the UNSCOM team was kicked out. When the UNMOVIC team moved in, they found the seals still in tact. These shells were often looted and moved shortly after the collapse of Saddam's Regime, and at least one has been used in an IED. I'm definately curious as to whether or not these were items that were catalogued by UNSCOM and were moved or disappeared after the invasion.

The near-certainty with which every Western intelligence agency believed he had WMD added urgency to his removal, but he could have avoided that outcome at any point in the year-long run-up to the invasion by allowing free access by weapons inspectors.

Two rather controversial assertions in one sentence!

To the first. As Fred Kaplan has notednoted in Slate: "most of the world's intelligence agencies figured Saddam Hussein would like to have weapons of mass destruction. If he [Bush] means an assessment of Saddam Hussein's capabilities, though, he's wrong: Several countries' spy agencies never bought the notion that Saddam had such weapons or the means to produce them in the near future."

To the second assertion: Hans Blix on March 19, 2003 had this to say; "We had made a rapid start. We did not have any obstacles from the Iraqi side in going anywhere. They gave us prompt access and we were in a great many places all over Iraq.
I didn't find that any of the (U.N.) diplomats here doubt that inspections will be very useful in the future."

From the last quarterly report submitted by UNMOVIC before the invasion of Iraq:
"All inspections were performed without notice, and access was in virtually all cases provided promptly. In no case have the inspectors seen convincing evidence that the Iraqi side knew in advance of their impending arrival."

JohnS,

Interesting quote from Kaplan. He never names which countries didn't believe Saddam was in possession of WMD before the invasion, let alone provide references. However, earlier in the article he makes this admission:

As with many of the president's carefully worded speeches on the subject, this one contains fragments of truth—for instance, nearly everyone, including the war's opponents, did think back in the fall of 2002 that Saddam had WMDs—but they serve only to disguise the larger falsehoods and deceptions.

What these larger falsehoods and deceptions are supposed to be, I have no idea. The rest of the article contains a lot of petty quibbling over semantics.

You didn't even provide a link for the second two quotes. Saddam didn't block all inspections at every turn, so it's hardly interesting that you could find a few quotes describing cooperation.

phil wrote:

Above all , the question was: do these reasons for war justify the must-invade-now-now-now-now drumbeat that the administration (& Congressional GOP) is marching us so hard to

"Marching us so hard"? The use of force was debated for over a year; it was hardly a fast march. (How long did it take us to go into Afghanistan? Three months?)

Anyway, I do agree that "Was the invasion wise" is a more important question than "was it justified?". I believe that given the information we had at the time, Saddam's continued defiance of international pressure, his history of aggression and of using chemical weapons, etc., forcibly removing him from power was the appropriate choice--in fact, I'd say the US displayed remarkable patience and restraint (especially following 9/11) in giving Saddam one last chance, then another, then another... and letting UN bureaucrats debate, then debate some more, then debate a little more.

A full analysis of whether invading Iraq was the wrong decision is, of course, beyond the scope of a debate in a blog comment box. One thing is certain, though, and that is the current debate in the political sphere is completely incapable of settling the question.

"Marching us so hard"? The use of force was debated for over a year; it was hardly a fast march. (How long did it take us to go into Afghanistan? Three months?)"

Actually it took less than 1 month to start the bombing campaign in Afghanistan. Took basically as long as it took us to move the carriers.

But in Iraq, it was a fast march, in one main way. It was a fast march because the UNMOVIC team only had about 3 months to do their job, not a full year. They went in, found nothing, had plenty more searching to do, went where we told them to, but we invaded before they had a chance to fully account for everything and confirm that Saddam was disarmed.

That is how it was fast...even the French were putting together offers where they'd consider supporting an invasion if the U.S. gave the inspectors more time, but we had to go before either summer hit or the inspectors confirmed Iraq was not restarting its program.

Here are the links I neglected to include, Eric:

From this BBC News article: Annan, Blix regret Iraq conflict

and

Information & Press Library
Resource Library
Twelfth quarterly report of the Executive Chairman of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission in accordance with paragraph 12 of Security Council resolution 1284

Since it only took five to fifteen shells for Chemical Ali to murder 5,000 Kurds with similar rounds of Sarin I'd think these would qualify as WMD. They certainly would if their contents were released into the NYC subway system. Since they are WND I'll be looking for Balta's buddy for four (4) steak dinners.

"The use of force was debated for over a year; it was hardly a fast march. (How long did it take us to go into Afghanistan? Three months?)"

This is a remarkable specimen of a particular variety of intellectual laziness that is all too common on the blogosphere: an unthinking overreliance on eyeball estimates. "Sheesh, if we could go to war in Afghanistan in three months, golly, surely one year would be long enough to decide to go to war in Iraq?" It is of a piece with much of the silliness that gets thrown about from topics as diverse as the budget ("We spend blahblah billion on international aid/health care/education/etc., and surely that's too much") and immigration ("Just look at the new, Spanish-speaking waves of immigration, and you can just see that they're different than the earlier waves"). One of the most important facts to internalize about matters of public policy is: unless you are a very highly-trained expert with tons of experience, your capacity to successfully judge issues like these just by eyeballing them is approximately nil. (And, indeed, it might not be much better even if you are such an expert!)

So it is rather unwise to allow ourselves, in a spurt of silliness, to think that we can just look at their respective times and just see how long the Iraq debate should have been in comparison to Afghanistan (because... what? Iraq is obviously only 4 times more complicated that Afghanistan?). Rather, we should ask: what ought the criteria be for how long a debate should go, for a war like the one in Iraq? Here are a few, and once enumerated we can see how radically unlike the Afghanistan decision was the Iraq decision, and moreover how we patently did not debate it for long enough.

(i) One can cease debate if one has uncovered a necessary cause for war. E.g., an immediate threat of attack from another nation, or of course having already sustained such an attack. (For Afghanistan, we had been attacked by a foreign entity (Al Qaeda) that was being actively protected by a government, which refused to yield that entity to us after it had committed that attack. There is no parallel here to Iraq.)

Failing to have a necessary cause for war, you're debating a war of choice. Some relevant criteria:
(ii) Has one discussed the matter sufficiently to bring enough of one's allies on board? (Yes, in Afghanistan; no, in Iraq.)
(iii) Has one discussed the matter sufficiently so that the people of your own nation understand the grounds of the decision to go to war, and are overwhelmingly on board with them? (Yes, in Afghanistan; no, in Iraq, and that's why America wants out of this war that it feels it was tricked into.)
(iv) Has one discussed the matter sufficiently to determine what the success conditions of the war will be? And that one has the means to attain those ends? (Yes, in Afghanistan -- once we ended the Taliban regime, there were other local forces already in place to take power; no, in Iraq, as is clearer every day.)
(v) Regardless of how long one has talked about the issue, has one waited long enough to mount the invasion to be sure that one has done enough careful planning & deployment of resources to attain those ends? (Yes, in Afghanistan, or at least it would be so if we hadn't taken our eyes off the ball and redeployed to Iraq; no, in Iraq, as is ever more obvious.)
(vi) Has one discussed the matter sufficiently to determine whether non-war options have been exhausted? (A slight maybe-not in Afghanistan, but it's trumped by the relevance of condition (i); no, in Iraq, for reasons that others have discussed above.)

Three months -- or, indeed, one month -- was plenty of time to decide to go to war in Afghanistan because that war was a clear & easy call. That the war in Iraq has turned out so very badly is due, in no small part, from our having rushed into it at what, given the circumstances, really was a breakneck speed.

Since they are WND (SIC) I'll be looking for Balta's buddy for four (4) steak dinners.

Hey, Leon Dixon of Muncie IN, I thought you had cut and run from the blogosphere as it were.

These arent the WMD promoted and promised by Bush and company. The claims were for active programs rather than degraded Pre-Gulf War, which was nearly two decades ago, munitions possibly stolen or lost by the Saddam ran Iraqi armies. If that’s the case do we invade FEMA for loosing millions of dollars? Some of that money could be used to fund terrorists, or Hooters.

As I pointed out above by that standard my Grandfathers shop would be a target for invasion (look out Keystone Ave).

These aren’t the WMDs we for which we made a wager, over on “The Island of Balta, but heck, if you want take me up on my offer for a steak dinner in Indy sometime, let me know. But take the fuzzy math number of four elsewhere, the wager was for one, but admittedly you paid for two.

PS: My name is Foltz, not Balta's buddy, but that would be one heck of a nickname.

PPS: Hey Balta, wanna come with us?

J. Foltz is not exactly on my speed dialer and no, I did not bolt but was booted by some thin skinned person with the power to do so once and perhaps again. As to the WMD'S do keep a weather eye posted on the issue since there is considerably more to it. I don't know why it remains classified in view of the facts being obtained by the translations of Sadaam's many discussions of WMD. Sure, Balta would be welcome and it ought not be difficult to find a 4th for such a great steakhouse.

From the Associated Press today:

They probably would have been intended for chemical attacks during the Iran-Iraq War, said David Kay, who headed the U.S. weapons-hunting team in Iraq from 2003 until early 2004.

He said experts on Iraq's chemical weapons are in "almost 100 percent agreement" that sarin nerve agent produced from the 1980s would no longer be dangerous.

"It is less toxic than most things that Americans have under their kitchen sink at this point," Kay said.

And any of Iraq's 1980s-era mustard would produce burns, but it is unlikely to be lethal, Kay said.

To which Donald Rumsfeld replied, with his trademarked idiocy:

Asked about the potential danger to U.S. troops, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said: "They are weapons of mass destruction. They are harmful to human beings. And they have been found."

Like I said before, it's embarrassing.

greg

phil,

This is a remarkable specimen of a particular variety of intellectual laziness that is all too common on the blogosphere

That's rather uncharitable of you. When you used the phrases "marching us so hard to [war]" and "must-invade-now-now-now drumbeat" I had no way of knowing you had something deeper in mind than the uncritical way those sorts of accusations are usually used by critics of the war. I stand by my statement that our action in going into Afghanistan was much more rushed than going into Iraq. You may think that the rush to depose the Taliban regime was justified while our relative patience with Saddam was insufficient, but there's no quesiton we were more patient with Saddam than with the Taliban. Therefore, to use a phrase like "must-invade-now-now-now drumbeat" assumes several very debatable points and also includes a strong element of hindsight bias.

In fact, many of your points in your last comment have little to do with having spent enough time debating, but rather whether the correct decision was made...

(i) One can cease debate if one has uncovered a necessary cause for war. E.g., an immediate threat of attack from another nation

I would argue that a regime which engaged in a decade of simmering hostility toward the U.S. and our allies following a war of aggression, which routinely violated the terms of the cease-fire which ended that war, which was providing payments to the families of homicide bombers attacking civilians in Israel (our close ally), which was known to have had stockpiles of chemical weapons at one time, and which was not complying with its mandate to account for that stockpile and allow inspections to ensure no active program to manufacture new WMD, *was* an immediate threat.

(ii) Has one discussed the matter sufficiently to bring enough of one's allies on board?

That depends on what you define as "enough." If "enough" must include at least one of Russia, France, and Germany, then no. But we had 48 nations on board, including the UK, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Ukraine, Poland, and other nations from Europe, Asia, South America, and Africa

(iii) Has one discussed the matter sufficiently so that the people of your own nation ... are overwhelmingly on board with them? (...America wants out of this war that it feels it was tricked into.)

In fact, a large majority of Americans did approve of the invasion of Iraq. (Those who have since changed their mind have been wearied by the drawn-out fight with terrorists who desperately don't want democracy to succeed in Iraq, and those who think they were "tricked" have bought into the political opportunism being employed by some to take advantage of the fact that our assessment of Iraq having WMD turned out to be wrong.)

(iv) Has one discussed the matter sufficiently to determine what the success conditions of the war will be?

The success conditions of the war were removing the Saddam regime from power and destroying Saddam's WMD. The former was accomplished, the latter turned out not to exist

(v) Regardless of how long one has talked about the issue, has one waited long enough to mount the invasion to be sure that one has done enough careful planning & deployment of resources to attain those ends?

I will agree that the Pentagon's plans were not designed to handle the disintegration of Saddam's forces from a conventional army into guerilla warfare. They expected a tougher head-on fight and were not prepared to prevent the formation of an armed "resistance movement" (if that's even possible in a nation where weapons are as widespread as iPods in the US). However, I doubt this was primarily due to a lack of time to plan. A lack of imagination, perhaps, or of intel, or perhaps they simply couldn't prepare for both a conventional battle and guerilla warfare.

Again, I believe 12 months is certainly enough time to deal with these issues. You may disagree with the outcome, but while rushed decisions often come out wrong, not every wrong decision was rushed. It's very easy to commit hindsight bias and conclude that because things didn't turn out as well as you'd like, someone must have screwed up.

"It's very easy to commit hindsight bias and conclude that because things didn't turn out as well as you'd like, someone must have screwed up."

I have to agree with Eric. Hindsight is too easy. Who could posssibly have predicted the outcome of our decision to invade Iraq? Oopsie!

JohnS,

As usual, you show that playing "gotcha" with quotes is easier than thinking for yourself. I'm surprised you couldn't find anyone who said something similar about the 2003 Iraq War, rather than the 1991 conflict. Take any major policy decision and you'll find people who make negative predictions about its outcome. Inevitably, whenever something goes wrong there are people around to say "I told you so." But this relies on exactly the sort of hindsight bias I'm talking about.

(There were also people predicting tens of thousands of casualties in the initial invasion. No one seems to remember incorrect predictions all that much--which, by the way, is how psychics often gain attention.)

The near-certainty with which every Western intelligence agency believed he had WMD added urgency to his removal, but he could have avoided that outcome at any point in the year-long run-up to the invasion by allowing free access by weapons inspectors.

Sigh. As noted above, this contains at a minimum one counterfactual assertion: Every Western intelligence agency believed he had WMD.

This one could have been made merely misleading by using a qualifier such as "nearly" in front of every.

Nevertheless, there were two main reasons the Russians declined to join our invasion: Self-interest in terms of monies and potential monies to be had from illegal dealings with the Hussein regime as well as Russian intelligence assessments that the Hussein regime did not possess WMD capabilities.

But to me, the most direct refutation of your so-often paraphrased and still-used fib, Eric, is the inconvenient fact that even within the US intelligence community, there was no such certainty and evidence to the contrary was communicated directly to the President at several times in several ways.

For example, and perhaps you forgot, at some point in 2002, the US turned a member of Hussein's own inner core, Naji Sabri Ahmad Al-Hadithi, Saddam's foreign affairs minister, who agreed to remain in place while providing the CIA with Iraqi military secrets.

A source for this information is Tyler Drumheller, a former high-ranking CIA official who was directly involved with Sabri.

According to Drumheller, when then-CIA director Tenet personally shared the news about Sabri with Bush, Cheney and Rice, "they were excited that we had a high-level penetration of Iraqis."

Unfortunately for your false meme, Eric, Sabri went on to tell US intel that Saddam "had no active weapons of mass destruction program."

Embarassingly for your meme, Eric, when this was passed to the White House in September 2002, they immediately lost interest in any further information from Sabri.

Drumheller, on the administration's reaction: "The group that was dealing with preparation for the Iraq war came back and said they're no longer interested. And we said, 'Well, what about the intel?' And they said, 'Well, this isn't about intel anymore. This is about regime change.'"

This alone proves nothing--certainly it doesn't prove whether Hussein had WMD or not. But it most certainly *disproves* your simple assertion that every intel agency agreed that Hussein possesed WMD.

Now, because this was reported by CBS News, it follows that you will not acknowledge it, but rather attack the messengers (CBS, Drumheller, me).

Nash,

Ironically, in making a baseless assumption that I will "attack the messenger," it is you who is engaging in ad hominem.

I was specifically not including Russia as part of "the West" when I said "every Western intelligence agency." Since the fall of communism there, Russia has become more Western, but is not entirely there as recent moves by Putin have demonstrated.

Nor does the existence of dissenting opinions within the US intelligence community mean all that much. The consensus opinion--based on the preponderance of the evidence--was that Saddam was hiding WMD. Rarely is anything certain in the intelligence business. Indeed, it would be quite surprising if there had been no one who didn't believe Saddam had WMD, even if it turned out that he in fact did.

So despite all the nitpicking from liberals who desperately want to paint a picture of the Bush Administration hell-bent on invading Iraq despite evidence to the contrary (for whatever ill motive they can postulate), the fact remains that the overwhelming majority of the intelligence community (in the US and among our allies...even those who opposed military action) believed Saddam had WMD.

Eric,

You are correct about my unfair characterization and I apologize for that.

Now. Going from "every Western intelligence agency believed he had WMD" to "the fact remains that the overwhelming majority of the intelligence community" while saying you were intentionally excluding Russia is a cheap stunt. What could possibly have kept you from acknowledging Russia's (important, and as it turns out, accurate) dissent? You are aware, I am sure, that French intelligence made the same conclusion--though this has been little understood, because the French come in for so much understandable contempt for their own immoral fingers being in the Hussein money pie.

I do not want to attribute any motivation, but it is unbelievably maddening to read your misleading claims that seem to add to the fog rather than the clarity. Please make a positive declaration: Some intelligence agencies of major allies strongly denied that Hussein had WMD.

and again, although I do not help my own case by having gotten personal, this...

Nor does the existence of dissenting opinions within the US intelligence community mean all that much. The consensus opinion--based on the preponderance of the evidence--was that Saddam was hiding WMD. Rarely is anything certain in the intelligence business

is also unbelievably maddening, because it's another example of you moving the goal posts. Simply acknowledge that you are doing so and I will desist. Meanwhile, the "consensus opinion" take also reads like a cheap stunt--that was not the argument we were having. By Feb 2003, American intelligence was most definitely divided as to Hussein's capabilities and a strong argument can be made that the "consensus" was that the weapons capabilities were not there. MSM repetition of GOP claims to the contrary do not make it so. It cannot be possible that I knew more than my own country's quite capable intelligence organizations that the question whether Hussein had WMD was in serious doubt and was likely untrue. I was reading Reuters, Knight Ridder, and even the openly pro-war WaPo and NYT, and other sources and I knew that much...,e.g., I knew Curveball was a "lie" before March 2003 because Knight Ridder showed me that.

I could not have learned things my own country's leaders did not know. I am not making accusations against my country's leaders or against you. I am merely weary of hearing the same old untruths being brought out. I knew better, and I know you now know better.

Meanwhile, again, my apologies. I will work on my civility. I overreacted, but I have no excuse and no recourse but to apologize.

Eric,

I've checked the Terms of Usage and don't see any warnings with regards to use of quotes to make a point.

Additionally, you might consider excluding Australia's, too, from your panoply of Western intelligence agencies believing that Saddam had WMD. The Sydney Morning Herald reports that "Australian intelligence agencies made it clear to the Government all along that Iraq did not have a massive WMD programabout Iraq's WMDs and links to al-Qaeda."

You are correct about my unfair characterization and I apologize for that.

Apology accepted. I do try to distinguish between people who want to have a civil debate and those who wish to simply bash and annoy people who don't agree with them, and craft my responses accordingly.

Going from "every Western intelligence agency believed he had WMD" to "the fact remains that the overwhelming majority of the intelligence community" while saying you were intentionally excluding Russia is a cheap stunt.

I don't see how it is. Please note that I did include two qualifiers in my original statement (even though it was an off-the-cuff remark and I didn't intend to launch into yet another debate on pre-war intelligence). I said "The near-certainty with which every Western intelligence agency believed [Saddam] had WMD" (emphasis added).

You are aware, I am sure, that French intelligence made the same conclusion

No. My understanding was that the French were the head of the "Yeah, we think he's got WMD, but give the weapons inspectors more time" crowd. If I am incorrect on that, then in the future I'll say that every Western nation which didn't have its hands in the oil-for-food scam cookie jar believed Saddam had WMD.

[Speaking of the consensus of the intelligence community] is also unbelievably maddening, because it's another example of you moving the goal posts.

Again, I don't see how it is. When I say an intelligence agency thinks X, it does not mean every single person in the agency agrees. When you say that the Supreme court ruled such-and-such, it does not imply that the justices voted 9-0.

By Feb 2003, American intelligence was most definitely divided as to Hussein's capabilities and a strong argument can be made that the "consensus" was that the weapons capabilities were not there.

That is not my recollection at all, and I was reading a broad array of news as well. Unfortunately, I don't think this can be proven one way or the other. We can't exactly travel in time to 2/2003 and take a poll of CIA analysts. Nor do post-invasion statements by former officials prove much--once it became apparent that we were wrong about WMD, there was obviously a much greater incentive for people to come forth and say "I was right--I never believed Saddam had WMD" than to say "Boy, was I wrong!"

To turn the tables on you a bit, I will ask what you mean by "weapons capabilities." If Saddam was holding onto a significant quantity of viable nerve gas but had no immediate way to use it as a weapon, I'd still say he was in defiance of his requirement to disarm. Likewise, if he had empty shells and no stockpile of nerve gas, but the capability of making nerve gas to fill the shells at any time, I'd say that would still constitute a WMD threat.