PICTURE POWELL AT THE U.N. AS YOU READ THIS

From the Sunday Herald:

The Bush administration has admitted that Saddam Hussein probably had no weapons of mass destruction.

Senior officials in the Bush administration have admitted that they would be 'amazed' if weapons of mass destruction (WMD) were found in Iraq.

According to administration sources, Saddam shut down and destroyed large parts of his WMD programmes before the invasion of Iraq.

Ironically, the claims came as US President George Bush yesterday repeatedly justified the war as necessary to remove Iraq's chemical and biological arms which posed a direct threat to America.

Bush claimed: 'Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. We will find them.'

. . . can we get this into a campaign ad somehow? . . .

(...)

The senior US official added that America never expected to find a huge arsenal, arguing that the administration was more concerned about the ability of Saddam's scientists -- which he labelled the 'nuclear mujahidin' -- to develop WMDs when the crisis passed.

This represents a clearly dramatic shift in the definition of the Bush doctrine's central tenet -- the pre-emptive strike. Previously, according to Washington, a pre-emptive war could be waged against a hostile country with WMDs in order to protect American security.

Here comes my favorite line, the closer:

Now, however, according to the US official, pre-emptive action is justified against a nation which simply has the ability to develop unconventional weapons.

In other words, "everybody". Would the "sticky bombs" from Saving Private Ryan be considered "unconventional weapons"? Even that cinematic example notwithstanding, in that definition I'm sure there are many means by which we have suddenly justified pre-emptive strikes on our soil and interests. Goog going, US official! From the sound of it, looks like ol' Richard Perle has a job again, congrats sir!

The Bushies knew going into this that they probably wouldn't find WMD's, so presumably they knew the political consequences (not to mention the huge international credibility consequences) of falsely using the issue to justify a pre-emptive war. Thus, we've had a string of vaudeville acts over the past few weeks from our fearless leader and his administration. We've talked trash with Syria. We've had Captain Awol's little flight show on the 30-miles-offshore aircraft carrier. We've even witnessed the timely and brief resurrection of Newt Gingrich. All of this flashes before our eyes in the hope that the "WMD's were never really the issue" claim doesn't seem as preposterous as it really is.