No munitions but plenty of intentions

At first I cringed at today’s lead editorial in the WashPost titled: “Weapons that weren’t there.” But midway through, one could sense that the Post was defending the President’s decision to remove Saddam Hussein:

As long as Saddam Hussein remained in power and refused to cooperate fully with the United Nations, there could have been no certainty about his weapons. Mr. Bush had to decide whether the risks of invading outweighed those of standing pat without knowing for sure what U.S. forces would find in Iraq or what would happen once they were there.

Really, could President Bush have taken any other course given the events of 9/11? And the Duelfer report also turns over the rock that was the Oil-for-Food program:

Saddam Hussein made $11 billion in illegal income and eroded the world's toughest economic embargo during his final years as Iraq's leader through shrewd schemes to secretly buy off dozens of countries, top foreign officials and major international figures, according to a new report by the chief U.S. weapons inspector released yesterday.

And, quel surprise, all those allies that John Kerry said he would “convince” were on Saddam’s indirect payroll. Glenn Reynolds could barely contain himself in his article “Kerry’s case collapses”:

The real centerpiece of Kerry's foreign policy stance, though, has been that he would be better than Bush at getting allies together, and at passing the "Global Test" before taking military action. And that case is in total collapse this week.

The Democrats will surely crow “No WMDs!” but the Duelfer report contains a lot of hard realities about “allies” and Saddam’s intentions.

Extra: Some choice newspaper editorials via Blogs for Bush.