I’m certainly not the first to point this out, but those who are either elated or disgusted at the recent story regarding the disappearance of nearly 400 tons of munitions in Iraq ought to consider the following.

1. If they were there after the US troop presence or not, why are they a concern now? Iraq was not a danger, right? Not threat, right? There were no significant weapons, right?

2. If 400 tons of explosives were there before the invasion but not when US troops arrived on scene, as claimed by the embedded NBC reporter, then they must have been spirited away before we got there. If Iraq was able to accomplish that effectively, then is it not likely to assume that they did the same with far less weighty munitions, such as chemical and biological weapons and anything to do with a nuclear weapons program? In other words, bringing this story up completely undercuts any claim you can make that there were likely no WMDs on the basis that we have not found any.

To restate my longstanding position for purposes of clarification, going into Iraq on the basis of WMDs was dumb. It was dumb then, and it’s still dumb, dumb, DUMB. The justification for taking Iraq was simply that it was the next logical offensive step strategically. It’s no more complicated than that.