You're right SRS, I most certainly will take you to task on that post. Scholarly, you may, or may not, be, but you do appear to have an incredibly uninquisitive nature, totally at odds with your contention that, "I have no problem in true discussions of issues and I enjoy evaluating new materials and digging into their sources for verification."

Specific points:

"Saddam clearly doesn't have the massive arsenal of weapons George Bush accused him of having."

Two things here:
Firstly the arsenal of weapons that Saddam was accused of having was quantified by the United Nations UNSCOM Inspection Team - Not by George Bush.

Secondly, you have no grounds whatsoever to state what "clearly" exists in Iraq.

"Saddam had a few dregs of the Iran/Iraq War collection that were forgotten in corners."

That is all that has been found? What has caused your eagerness to evaluate information dismiss without mention the missile developement programme? What has caused your eagerness to evaluate information dismiss without mention the prohibited import of some 380-odd rocket motors? What has caused your eagerness to evaluate information dismiss the attempts by Iraq in the run up to the war to purchase Atropin in bulk?

As for the, "few dregs of the Iran/Iraq War collection". What process of evaluation have you applied to those?

The ones found earlier by UNMOVIC were found in a military ordinance storage facility. Where were these ones found? Hidden in the town of Hilla. Now just out of curiosity, did you at any time ask yourself how they came to be there? A 122mm rocket is a tactical battlefield weapon, left over and forgotten about from the Iran/Iraq War, Hilla was nowhere near the battle-zone during the Iran/Iraq War, so what were chemical warheads, two filled, doing hidden in the town of Hilla. These things are dangerous, you don't just leave them lying around. Yet you seem to find nothing strange in this, your eagerness to evaluate information presented to you, for some reason doesn't prompt you to ask the most basic of questions - Why - some bloody scholar. You are not in the least bit curious about the fact that it was a civilian who led the Polish Troops to the hiding place? - I would be - I'm not a scholar, CarolC has to bring things down to my level in order for me to understand her, but I am at least inquisitive enough to want to know what those munitions were doing there and ask why were they hidden.

"It doesn't take a lot of deductive reasoning to figure that Saddam didn't want to appear weak to his own people or to the world by capitulating to the U.N. and the U.S. and openly destroying his weapons in the early 1990s, yet his back was to the wall."

I would like to point out, SRS, that, dating back to 1991, "deductive reasoning" was not what was required by the United Nations. What was, was full and complete disarmament, that disarmament process to be carried out under the supervision of the appointed United Nations Inspectors, carried out in such a manner that it could be fully verified - that is what was required, not "deductive reasoning" some 13 years down the track.

What evidence is available that causes you to state that the weapons mentioned in the UNSCOM Report of January 1999, "..were, quietly dismantled, destroyed, scrapped, removed, whatever." I certainly haven't seen any such evidence to support that conclusion. What I have seen is clear evidence that material, Iraq declared it did not have, is being discovered, and being discovered in hidden locations. Again, where is your natural inquisitiveness, at what point does it kick in, and prompt you to question?

The Ba'athists, like most totallitarian regimes, were fanatical about keeping records. That is how UNSCOM discovered the unaccounted for WMD agents and munitions. Your enquiring mind, doesn't ask itself the question, "Why was this trait suddenly reversed, why were well established bureaucratic procedures just dispensed with?" I'd want to know why.

You ask, "May we draw no conclusions from the materials we have offered here?" Of course, but one thing that becomes pattently clear is that your conclusions are drawn from one perspective and one perspective only. You do not think round things, your conclusions are solely arrived at to bolster your own preconceived notions.

By all means, attack and question my point of view, but please don't come out with such absolute crap as:

"I'm with Nerd and Bobert and Don Firth in this--it's frustrating to try to carry on a reasonable discussion when some of the participants don't know shit from shinola when it comes to offering up logical, well-considered rhetorical arguments."

So far, when it comes to demonstrating who doesn't know shit from shinola, you clearly show that you sure as eggs are eggs don't.