Dave Hinz wrote:
...

See above. Best available intel said he was being a problem.

Wrong. An examination of the data available at the time the
October, 2002 NIE was released shows that intel was carefully
selected to exaggerated the danger psoed by Iraq.

By March 2003 far better intel was available that clearly showed
the NIE to be wrong.

Maybe
he was - we gave him more than a decade to hide the stuff, y'know?

No matter how often you repeat that lie it remains a lie.

From 1991 to 1998 UNSCOM was on the ground in Iraq searching,
removing and destroying. From 1999 to 2002 Iraq had time to
hide anything that wasn't destroyed in Operation Desert Fox.
and anything produced during the inspections hiatus.

In 2002, and 2003, inspections showed that materials that
had been inventoried and tagged were still intact under
IAEA and UNSCOM seal providing storng evidence that no
WMD programs were resumed during that period. The
'discrepencies' Blix referred to in his reports between
the Iraqi declarations and what UNMOVIC could acccount for
were almost all a 'discrepency' between Iraqi documentation
and US _estimates_.

Given that the US was caught red-handed foisting forged
documents on the IAEA how much trust would any reasonable
person have for the Bush administration? That's the
major point. To believe that Iraq was in compliance one
need only rely on independently verified FACT. To believe
that Iraq was not in compliance one has to trust a proven
lian.

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FF