kendall,

From your post in response to mine:

"How does one prove a negative?"

UNSCOM used extensive documentary evidence - supplied by the Iraqi's - that detailed their stocks of precursor material, stocks of weaponised agents and stocks of munitions, to establish what Iraq had produced, stored and used. Everything was fully documented and there was a discrepancy between those figures and what Iraq had used and what had been destroyed under UNSCOM supervision. The Iraqi authorities did not co-operate with UNSCOM in resolving questions relating to what had happened to that material, instead they embarked on an extremely well co-ordinated programme of deception and interference - Why?

Entirely at the instigation of the current US administration, UN inspection teams return to Iraq and again did not receive the full, pro-active co-operation of the Iraqi regime. Everything up to date on their WMD programmes had been fully documented by the Iraqi's - Why all of a sudden was this practice abandoned?

Now you, as Kendall Morse, can afford to take the view, "Oh well, I'll just write that down as a book-keeping error and I will accept Saddam's assurances that all such stocks, weaponised agents and munitions have been destroyed." You can afford to adopt that course of action because you are only responsible for Kendall Morse. You can also choose to ignore the fact that the man and regime you have just given a clean bill of health to has current links with terrorist organisations and totally dismiss the possibility that he might extend those links to terrorist organisations operating internationally, or that material, expertise and knowledge passed to those groups could not possibly to transferred to others for use against you. The President of the United States of America could never adopt such views because he is responsible for safety and security of the entire nation and all its citizens where ever they may be in this world.

"Why didn't Saddam use those weapons? because they did not exist?"

Again as private citizen Kendall Morse you can state the above quite happily and ignore all other possible explanations. You can choose to ignore the fact that he has used them and could use them again. Are you willing to consider those other possible explanations? If so they are as follows:
- 1991, during Desert Storm, they weren't used because the remit of the coalition forces was the expulsion of Iraqi forces from Kuwait - not the conquest of Iraq. The way that war went Saddam Hussein knew that if at anytime he had used those weapons that remit would have changed dramatically and those weapons would not have affected the end result - the total destruction of himself, his regime and his country.

- Means of delivery, Saddam's force's optimum means of delivering such weapons was from the air, in 1991 his Air Force, en-masse did a bunk to Iran. In 2003, due to complete air supremacy of coalition forces, he had no Air Force to deliver those munitions.

Having gone through the reports and comments of both Dr. Hans Blix, Chief of the UNMOVIC Weapons Inspection Team, and Dr. Mohamed Al-Baradei, Head of IAEA, before the war, neither made any such comment in relation to their work being a, "wild goose chase", and neither made any comment or statement that no such weapons existed.

As for your comment, "On the news tonight, the white house finally admitted it had received memos from the CIA months ago warning Bush that some of the intelligence was faulty." Oh Joy!! as you put such great store in that admission, does that mean that you accept fully that as some of the intelligence was faulty, then some of it wasn't?

As Kendall Morse, private citizen - you can afford that luxury - Your President cannot, and unlike you must decide on a course of action based upon what information he has at a given time. The events of September 11th, 2001 changed the world, because it was brought home abundantly clearly that the United States of America for all it's great power, wealth and geographic position was as vulnerable as any other nation on this planet - with that realisation comes the necessity to change the way of thinking at the top with regard to evaluation of potential threats. Particularly if your President wants to honour his obligation to his country and to private citizen Kendall Morse.