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Kerryman, the main assist the US gave Iraq during its war with Iran (we did not much care for Iran after the whole embassy hostage deal) was indeed battlefield intelligence. We did not provide them with gas. It is true that some "dual use" materials were provided which can be precursors to the development of chemical weapons . . . but then if you sell someone sulphur, you have provided them with a precursor to making black powder.

Remember the UN inspectors that were in Iraq long after the Gulf War? Departed in 1997, with the warning that hundreds of tons of chemical weapons were still unaccounted for. The fact that they were not found in a few months' worth of searching in 2002-early 2003 is pretty much irrelevant--since Saddam had successfully played "hide and seek" with inspectors in the past. There was NEVER any proof that all the chemical weapons had been destroyed. In fact, we found chemical artillery rounds (some of which the insurgents used in some of their IED's, fortunately with little effect as far as poison gas goes) long after we invaded.

Remember how the Russians and the Americans handled nuclear arms reductions? "Trust but verify." There was no reason to trust Saddam, and the destruction of his chemical arsenal was thus never verified with "eyeballs on the ground" to witness the process--which is the only way to verify something of that nature, and which is precisely what we and the Russians did, as nukes were destroyed. Our teams were over there watching; their teams came here and watched. President Clinton and Vice President Gore both commented--repeatedly--about Saddam's WMD's. And that was with the same individual (George Tenet) heading the CIA who remained in that position under Bush. So it wasn't like the assessment changed, all of a sudden, once Bush came into office or once his administration began to contemplate taking military action against Saddam. Rather, it was the same assessment on which Clinton and Gore had operated. And the Senate Intelligence Committee (bipartisan) did not accuse the CIA of lying about WMD's, nor did they accuse the Bush Administration of coming up with a different assessment by pressuring the analysts to change their views. Would have been no need to pressure them to change their views, because those views were that the WMD's were still there.

Whether we should have invaded Iraq is certainly open for debate. However, the Bush Administration did not lie about WMD's. They simply repeated what the intelligence community told them--with "high confidence". And per the above, the intelligence community did not change its views on WMD's to suit the new administration, because it didn't have to. The Bush Administration (especially Cheney) was pushing the analysts hard to come up with some ongoing relationship between Saddam and Al Qaeda. However, the intelligence community held firm on their stance that while there had been contacts, a real "relationship" did not exist, and Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11. In fact, the intelligence community went so far as to debunk a report from a friendly intelligence service (the Czechs) which put one of the hijackers--Mohammed Atta--in Prague and in contact with Iraqi intelligence just a few months before the attack. If they had wanted to cook the books for Bush/Cheney, that report handed them the ingredients on a silver platter--which they promptly upset.

Kerryman, you're running pretty good propaganda yourself, referring to me as a "former spook". I was "former" LONG before we went to war in Iraq . . . long before 9/11, in fact. Therefore, I have no ax to grind on this issue, other than to get at the truth--just as I did when serving as an intelligence analyst and as a commander of analysis units. I have yet to see any proof that, given the Oct 02 NIE, Bush "lied" about WMD's, nor that the intelligence community lied in its assessment. That assessment was indeed wrong in many respects, but that does happen in the intelligence business, since intelligence is the science (and art) of uncovering the unknown, which others are trying to obscure or hide from you. So it makes about as much sense for you to refer to me as a former spook as it would for me to refer to you as a current hard-headed Irishman. Both should be irrelevant to the discussion . . . unless we start talking about either Ireland or the nitty-gritty of how the intelligence process works.