On the contrary, you're buying into the Bush administration's spin on WMD. They knew he didn't have nukes (and Obama only says Saddam "coveted" nukes). But they kept talking about "mushroom clouds" and hyping the yellowcake story, etc., because a nuke is the sort of WMD that could be a threat to us over here in the USA. Then they lumped that into the broad category of WMD to promote fear.

But not all WMD are equally large threats. And if Saddam didn't have nukes, and didn't have close ties to al Qaeda, but did still have the sorts of nasty WMD he used against the Kurds, how much of a threat to America is that really? Is it enough of a threat to justify war Bush was intent on starting? And enough of a threat that we needed to thrust ourselves into the middle of sectarian turmoil, to destabilize the country and then have to try to rebuild it to the point of stability, risking turning a largely secular Islamic state into a state dominated by Islamic fundamentalists of various kinds as Bush has managed to do?

Obama was right. It was politically incorrect to say it at the time, but he said it, and he was right.

the administration's line about Iraq possessing WMD

Cute. In an blog post critical of Obama for engaging in spin, the critic wait for it engages in spin.

Going back in the not-too-long-ago time machine, we note that
1. a butt-load of countries invoked the line about Iraq possessing WMD
2. Iraq historically had WMD
3. Iraq historically used WMD
4. we still do not know where Iraq's WMD went.

Bob, of course is on drugs and channeling someone who read minds. But the author of this piece of snideness should know better.

Paul probably isn't on drugs, but he can't read. Saddam had historically used WMDs, and he's a really bad guy, but not all WMDs are created equal. Based on what was publicly known at the time Obama would have been wrong to claim that Saddam had no WMDs at all, of any kind. He used chemical weapons against the Kurds years before, and could easily have had some still stockpiled. He could have produce more. Obama was correct in acknowledging that, as far as anyone knew, Saddam could very well have still had *that* sort of WMD.

But Obama was also correct in saying that Saddam only "coveted" nukes. He didn't have them, contrary to the Bush administration's attempts to imply otherwise. The Bush administration also tried to blur the distinctions so that the most likely form of WMD in Saddam's possession (chemical weapons such as he had before, that would be extremely unlikely to be brought to American soil and used against us) were lumped in with nukes, a sort of WMD that would be much, much more serious threat but that Saddam didn't have.

And then the point that Paul works very hard to miss is that Obama was right in making the distinction that the Bush administration was trying to blur. The Bush administration had to blur that distinction because the flimsy justification for the war would be even flimsier if Saddam only had a sort of WMD that he was known to have had previously.

Obama was right. The war was not justified by the sort of WMD that Saddam was believed to have at the time. That's even more true now that we can see the enormous cost of the war, and the potential for escalating civil war, and the shift in Iraq from being a basically secular state to one dominated by Islamic fundamentalists of various kinds. Anyone who thinks Bush made us safer by doing this isn't paying attention.

I understood at the time that Sadaam didn't have nukes but that he "coveted" them. I don't know why a simple guy like me understood that but smart guys like Bob had to have the facts "blurred" in order to accept the necessary steps to their own preservation. In Tenet's interview on NPR this morning he said if left alone Sadaam would have had nukes by 2007 (that's now).

Sounds to me like Obama and Bush both agreed on the extent of Sadaam's badness but just not the correct course of action.

Today Sadaam is dead, hung by a legally constituted court in Iraq, no WMDs nuclear or otherwise.

I'm sorry but what about Afghanistan? I won't support anyone for president who believes that our takeover in Afghanistan was warranted. We could have captured Osama and/or most of his top lieutenants easily - instead of toppling the Taliban. The Taliban would not have intervened on Bin Laden's behalf. And certainly they lack the military power to get rid of him. We're finding that out the hard way against a depleted Taliban.
We forget that the Soviet Union and the late British Empire couldn't control the tribes in those mountains. Why do we have delusions about this? We need to get our sorry interventionist butts out of that area.
We wouldn't have the WMD problem in the first place if we didn't bankroll Saddam and encourage his murderous use of the WMDs against Iran. And we wonder about Iran's intentions in Iraq? Our interventionism has created all of the animosity against us in that region. When will we ever learn?