OK, not really. But for you hardcore lefties out there did your heart sink just a little? Or were your spirits uplifted that our war on Iraq is justified? Does your hatred of GWB run so deep that your biggest fear is that a large WMD stockpile will be found prior to November?
I believe there was evidence that Iraq had WMD. Some of the evidence came from Saddam's use of chemical weapons against his own people. Some of the evidence came from previous inventories of chemical weapons that could not be accounted for. Some of the evidence came from Iraqi scientists who intentionally lied to promote their agenda of removing Saddam from power. Saddam played a cat and mouse game with UN weapons inspectors for 10 years and finally lost. And if you can believe the intel, it was Saddam's goal to develop WMD.
I've read several articles about the scientists that pretended to work on WMD programs just so Saddam would keep funding their project. They mislead Saddam about the programs they were working on. What was Saddam's intent? The analysts that interpret intelligence reports are expected to make a determination based on the information provided to them. So, maybe they got this one wrong, maybe not.
This past week, the Whitehouse released the PDB that discussed the Bin Ladin/Al Qaeda threat. I've read it a couple of times. There is no specific threat that could have been acted upon. Just some general intel on Al Qaeda and their desire to hit targets inside the US and possibly even hijack airplanes. Still there will be those who, for political reasons, will argue that the information in the PDB was strong enough to take action and that the Whitehouse could have done more to prevent the tragedy on 9/11. These are the same people that will claim that the intelligence on Iraq WMD programs wasn't strong enough to justify a war.