Okay, so the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the war on Iraq was the weapons of mass destruc­tion Sad­dam Hus­sein had ready to use against the U.S.. The U.S. knew where the weapons were and a war would find them. Well, the war came and no weapons were found. So the sto­ry changed. The U.S. attacked Iraq because Sad­dam Hus­sein was devel­op­ing weapons of mass destruc­tion, which he would then sure­ly use against the U.S. The U.S. knew where the weapons were being devel­oped and they would be uncov­ered any day now. But five months of inspec­tors comb­ing Iraq have found nothing.

So now a new sto­ry. The U.S. under­sec­re­tary of state for arms con­trol tells us that whether Hus­sein had the weapons “isn’t real­ly the issue.” But the war is still jus­ti­fied because Sad­dam had sci­en­tists who might some­day work on a weapons pro­gram that might some­day build a weapon that might some­day be used against the U.S. or one of its allies

Bolton said that Sad­dam kept “a coterie” of sci­en­tists he was pre­serv­ing for the day when he could build nuclear weapons unhin­dered by inter­na­tion­al constraints.

I’m per­son­al­ly just wait­ing for the next lev­el of Bush Admin­is­tra­tion retreat. Wait for Bolton to announce next month that it didn’t mat­ter if Sad­dam didn’t actu­al­ly have any trained nuclear sci­en­tists, as occu­pa­tion inspec­tors had uncov­ered evi­dence that North Badg­dad High taught cal­cu­lus for its eleventh graders. “They might go on to work on a weapons pro­gram some­day, we had to invade before Sad­dam could teach them Calc II.”

The excus­es just get more pathet­ic as the truth becomes hard­er to ignore: the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion lied to the Amer­i­can peo­ple. The only win­ners in this war are the ener­gy com­pa­nies rebuild­ing the Iraqi infra­struc­ture with U.S. tax­pay­er dol­lars. It’s time to con­nect the dots, to stop pay­ing inves­ti­ga­tors to comb Iraq for the non-existant weapons. The inspec­tors should be recalled to Wash­ing­ton to inves­ti­gate the very real bam­boo­zle (dare I say “con­spir­a­cy”?) that foist­ed a war on the Amer­i­can peo­ple. We’ve been played for chumps.