Why do we really care whether or not Saddam had chemical or biological agents. We know he had them at one point, since he used them (forget what he says, that's the only absolute proof, even confessions aren't reliable). We know he has/had the people with the knowledge to build them. Regardless of whether or not we had gotten proof of the destruction of existing weapons a few years ago, he would still be able to produce new ones. As I have said before, the knowledge is probably harder to acquire than the weapons themselves.

What disturbs me is the unfortunate rhetoric surrounding the whole thing. "Liberate Iraq", "Free the People", etc. These weren't the original buzzwords, but came into being later on. It is nice to liberate them from a dictator, but we have no clue how to free them. Five soldiers have died in the last week, the Shiite majority is leaning heavily towards an Iranian style theocracy, ethnic unrest is building, etc. We have little experience, and no success with building stable, sound democracies in the modern world.

If we want to go after evil dictators, is it just coincidence that the first two regimes we go after happen to control access to vast quantities of oil? When are we going to liberate a country just to benefit the citizens, without the spectre of private financial gain suggesting an ulterior motive?

I haven't heard about the terrorist training camps in northern Iraq for some time. Is it just that people on this forum have better memories, or are they back in the news? I have a question about them:

Since even the hawks in the Bush administration acknowledged that Saddam had no presence in northern Iraq, who's training camps were these? The kurds?