Don, thanks for your post, which I read with interest, and would like to respond to.

"The primary reason the Bush administration gave for the pre-emptive invasion of Iraq was the contention that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and that he constituted a clear and imminent threat to the United States and to the rest of the world. This is what we, the American public and the rest of the world, were told by the Bush administration, based, they said, on intelligence reports they had received."

What you omit to mention in the above, is that having been given every possible opportunity to assist with the efforts of the UNMOVIC inspections teams, the Iraqi Authorities failed to comply with UNSC Resolution 1441.

"A secondary reason (insufficient to justify a preemptive attack, but presented as a sort of "moral imperative") was to bring democracy to the oppressed Iraqi people."

Due to the lack of co-operation on the part of the Iraqi Authorities, Regime Change became the only way by which whole-hearted Iraqi co-operation could be guaranteed.

There are three possibilities:—

It is inarguable that Saddam Hussein had chemical/biological weapons. We know this for two reasons: a) he used poison gas during the Iran-Iraq war and he used it again on the Kurds; and b) we have the receipts, because he got these CB weapons from US back when he was our Son of a Bitch.

You omit to mention the stocks of materials, agents, munitions and delivery systems detailed by UNSCOM in January 1999. Your contention in b) above is not wholely correct if you are referring to support given to Iraq during the Iraq-Iran War. The US did not supply Iraq with CB weapons - we have been over this before and you have yet to come up with any compelling evidence that they did. What America did supply was the means by which the Iraqi's could improve their defences against CB weapons - it should be remembered that Iran had those weapons too.

From your point 1.
"Saddam Hussein either hid them so well that we can't find them;"

Highly likely - the French, the Russians and the Germans, bought him enough time to accomplish just that

"or he sold them or passed them on to someone else (unsettling thought);"

If that is true then one of the main reasons given for the threat posed by this particular Regime has proved true.

"or they passed their sell-by date and he disposed of them (quite likely, because the shelf-life of chemical/biological weapons is limited)."

This could possibly be one of the favourites if I was a betting man - if this is the case then documentary evidence of their destruction and eye-witness accounts of those involved in the destruction will come out - unless those who carried this work out number among the occupants of the most recent mass graves discovered in Iraq. The reasoning given in parenthisis, is not strictly correct, during the period when UNSCOM were operating in Iraq, they tested weaponised agents that should have gone past their natural decay dates and found them to be still in good condition.

"Finding missiles with empty warheads that were designed for CB weapons would seem to indicate this."

Saddams mistrust of his military was such that they were purposely denied stocks of ammunition. The CB munitions would be stored as found and only filled immediately prior to use. The significance of finding the CB warheads was that it indicated the stuff reqired to fill them still existed. Large stocks of these munitions (rocket and artillery shells and bombs) were detailed by UNSCOM in 1999.

"It is obvious that he did not have a nuclear program that could have constituted a threat to the United States or anyone else for years to come."

Again not strictly correct according to Dr. Mohamed Al-Baradei. In his last reports to the UN Security Council, Dr Al-Baradei stated that he was move or less convinced that Iraq did not have a nuclear capability, the only outstanding point he had to verify was that Iraq did not have an on-going nuclear programme targeted at the acquisition of nuclear weapons.

From your point 2.
"American intelligence reports were flawed. There are two possibilities here: intelligence agencies were either mistaken, or they lied to the Bush administration."

You fail to mention the possibility that they could have been deliberately mislead. It is very difficult to actually argue this point from either side without knowing details of sources and means available for corroboration. It is also important to differentiate between intelligence data and intelligence evaluation of data.

"This does not bode well for any future actions such as pre-emptive attacks on other nations based on intelligence reports, because it would appear that the intelligence agencies are, for whichever reason, simply not reliable."

The policy of pre-emption was introduced by the nuclear age - nothing else. Intelligence is the only means by which nations can defend themselves. The more intelligence agencies co-operate with one another the less likely-hood there is of that intelligence being wrong, due to the number of sources and avenues for cross-checking. This co-operation between intelligence agencies has improved dramatically since 911.

From your point 3.
"The Bush administration lied to the American people and to the rest of the world."

Really? What lies?
That Iraq had WMD - they did according to UNSCOM, and no proof has been offered to date to contradict that report.
That Iraq was pursuing WMD programmes - 380-odd rocket motors smuggled into Iraq, an active rocket development programme that was proscribed by the UN, equipment dismantled by UNSCOM in the period 1991 - 1998 found repaired and re-assembled in another location by UNMOVIC in 2002-2003.

"Why? Control of the Middle East is considered essential to maintaining America's status as sole Superpower in the world."

Really? the region provides the USA with less than 16% of its oil requirements, that 16 % could easily be taken from elsewhere. It is in the interests of the USA that no one country dominates the region, and that the region is stable. There is a whale of a difference.

"Geopolitical domination of the world is greatly enhanced for whichever country controls the world's major oil reserves—whoever has its hand on the tap."

Under such criteria geopolitical domination of the world is therefore firmly in the hands of Russia - the country with the largest oil and natural gas reserves and the worlds largest oil exporter. They always have been and still are.

"The war on Iraq has been on the Right Wing agenda since the (to them) inconclusive and disappointing end of the Gulf War."

A point you could argue only with 20 x 20 hindsight. Your links to "The New American Century", no doubt will be waved like a flag for months to come, but when you get down to the bare bones of it, they represent the conclusions of a think-tank, that is all. When those conclusions were drawn none of those taking part held any political office, or had any real responsibilities in the real world. I dare say that exhaustive research could uncover think-tank reports from a mass of different organisations in a mass of different countries, that would make you hair stand on end. They are not policy documents, they are merely the reults of a talking-shop.

MGOH, says above -
"Having them in 1992 did the trick didn't it? Stopped the invasion."

No Kevin, Iraq's WMD did not stop the invasion - UNSC Resolutions stopped any full scale invasion and defeat of Iraq as they restricted the coalition to ejecting Iraqi occupying forces from Kuwait.

"If they'd really believed Iraq had them this time and was able to use them, does anybody seriously think there would have been an invasion this time?"

Coalition forces in 1991 knew that the Iraqi armed forces had CB weapons and credible delivery systems - it didn't stop them then Kevin - what was different this time? I vaguely touched on possible reasons for lack of use in 1991 and in 2003. CB weapons are fairly unreliable and have only been used historically in special circumstances against static or massed targets, they are of little use against highly mobile forces. Saddam's preferred means of delivery was from the air - Now Kevin exactly what did have Saddam not have in 1991 and in 2003 - an Air Force. The optimum time for an attack against the coalition forces in both 1991 and 2003 would have been during the build up with the assembly areas as target. On both occasions coalition air-power prevented him from doing that (remember the five week long intensive air campaign in 1990-1991, while the maintenance of the Southern No-Fly Zone prohibited deployment in the run up to 2003).