'My major objection was to "You don't need a report, just common sense." '
Yes that was an arrogant way of putting it, and it was thoughtless of me. But it seemed so obvious to me that I just blurted it out. My paragraph on 10 Oct 04 - 03:49 PM puts it better.
I didn't say "when dealing with Saddam," though. I was only talking about deciding whether he had WMDs, but now that you bring it up, what's wrong with common sense when dealing with Saddam? You couldn't expect him to have any sense, but that's no reason to be irrational yourself.