The research I have done indicates that the best estimates were that Saddam did have WMD

Unfortunately, those were not the best estimates, but the most flawed ones. They relied on underhanded Iranian agents and accepted their information without verification; they relied on undergraduate analytical skills and ignored assessments presented by professionals in UNMOVIC and others. Time and time again the facts were shoved to one side, distorted, mis-evaluated, altered or twisted ion order to provide a casus belli.

Those who treat war as a board game, without compassion for their own or the other side's human pieces, will argue that the technical interpretation of Hussein's position was sufficient to justify military enforcement. The UN did not appear to support this interpretation. The US decided (Bush decide,m anyway) that he could act without consensus. He unilaterally unleashed the violence and destruction of war for personal reasons -- meaning, to support his friends and family. He did not have a viable diplomatic excuse for war. He had not been attacked, nor was he under threat.   His disregard for human life in unleashing the massive forces of the US Armed Forces is equaled only by his dense inability to provide any adequate explanation for doing so.

As far as I am concerned it was premeditated assault with a blunt instrument, intentionally resulting in the death of individual human beings.

Absent legal process for the declaration of war and moral grounds for the prosecution of war, that spells murder.

As a result of his wooden-headed refusal to take counsel with anyone who had a brain, children have died in the sand. Mothers have been shot down by boys young enough to be their children. Fathers have been erased from their families. Poof, bang, zap. Good show, George.

And you have the unmitigated gall, or inconceivable density, to pretend that this is humanly justifiable?

Ptui.

A