BeardedBruce:

[Bruce]: I state that the UN report required by 1441 stated that Saddam was in substantial non-compliance, and give a clicky to it so that all can read it and see.

[Arne]: Ummm, nope. Amongst other things, it was the Security Council's job to decide if there was "substantial non-compliance".

Ummm, you can take the maladministration's word for it, Brucie. Here:

But Bush already realized the sources were not panning out. According to a Times review of the entire Jan. 31 memo, written by Blair's foreign policy adviser, David Manning, it showed that ''the president and the prime minister acknowledged that no unconventional weapons had been found inside Iraq."

With no weapons, Bush talked about provoking Saddam. ''The US was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in UN colors," the Times quotes the memo as saying. ''If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach."

The maladministration thought they needed to provoke a breach. Not too encouraging for the home team, Brucie, when even Dubya's on the other side, eh?

Cheers,