smooth

No one has even stated that. Remember this:

Two years ago there wasn't even a phrase "WMD." It entered the lexicon after multiple speeches and FOX, CNN, and other major news outlets began pumping it into our living rooms. In the beginning we were told that Saddam was going to blast nuclear weapons into our major cities. After that was debunked we were told that whatever he had, even if they weren't nuclear weapons, Saddam certainly possessed "Weapons of Mass Destruction" that could be used against us within 45 minutes. We were never explicitly explained what those weapons were. They became a composite of nuclear weapons (for the people a few days behind the headlines), chemical weapons (for the people remembering back about a decade to the previous war--discounting the fact that whatever of those were left were pretty much useless due to degradation), and biological weapons (matching the fears resulting from the Anthrax and various other diseases that were about 10 minutes from striking our major hubs of civilation).

This vague term came to represent any one of those things I listed so that any rational discussion about the merits of each one became useless--we each had a different definition of the threat and each was infused with its own level of emotional response.

So, the short answer is: we never argued that Saddam didn't have dangerous weapons nor that he didn't use them against an oppositional ethnic group living within the borders of Iraq (not "his own people"). Instead, the debate has been whether he possessed weapons that created a substantial threat to our security, whether he could have used them before we could stop him, or whether he could provide small nuclear or biological weapons to terrorist factions.

None of those scenarios have seemed to pan out. The best evidence and intelligence we have actually supports the opposite conclusion. No one in the region was interacting with Saddam--he was castigated by his neighbors. He did not share the same ideals as bin Laden and was unlikely to cooperate with Al-Qaeda. Any weapons he did have were probably defunct, of the ones he did possess he only became more likely to use them as our likelihood to invade increased.

Unfortunately, rational arguement regarding the claims that were primarily made is over. We are already there. Now we face the prospect of answering charges that we are callous if we appear to not "finish what we started", don't want Iraq "liberated", or that we don't care about innocent civilians being slaughtered. All of these are important points--but they weren't the points raised to convince a vastly diverse nation, arguably the most powerful in the world, to support a war. The adminstration played on our fears as a nation and then is playing on our cultural virutes (freedom, equality, and tenacity) to stay there--despite the reality of the original claims.

We aren't saying that Saddam didn't have weapons. What we are saying is that the degree of threat to our nation was exagerated and the people were unable to evaluate whether war was an appropriate response to the threat that was present. We could say that leaders should make such choices. And I would concede that point if we then started to debate whether we have a democracy (or republic if you want to get semantic on me--even still, we would then need to elect leaders based on the best information, not on an absence of information in order to make rational decisions). No matter what, our culture has always positioned itself in a rational-legal legitimacy. These types of actions ought to be addressed since they subvert that type of legitimacy. One can desire to "depose" the current adminstration without having a hatred for one's country--that's the reasons we vote, we don't have a monarchy where one specific leader is identified with the culture or nation as a whole.

Sorry, my dinner is ready...