Remember back when Colin Powell was respected? That'll never happen again.

In Rome Monday, Secretary of State Colin Powell said: "There were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It wasn't a figment of anyone's imagination." He cited Baghdad's use of the weapons in the war against Iran and against Iraqi Kurds in the 1980s, and the discovery of such weapons by U.N. inspectors after the 1991 Gulf War. -- CBS/AP.

Thanks for the history lesson, Colin. That's not the evidence that you cited back in February to the UN. Your case for war was that Iraq possessed WMD's in February 2003, not April 1991. While the US government continues to support Pakistan and Israel despite their WMD programs, you are now implying that attacking Iraq was justified because they had WMD's at one time--even though they apparently (eventually, at least) fulfilled their cease-fire and UN-required obligations to destroy them. Unless you find real weapons, you have no case whatsoever.

For the record, I was outraged by the war even while believing that Iraq probably possessed some WMD's. Inspectors had returned, and all indications, including from the CIA, were that whatever weapons Iraq possessed were only a threat to an invading army, posing little to no threat to Iraq's neighbors and none at all to the US. Even if a stash of weapons is eventually found, the war was still not justified. But without such a stash, we have to add outright lying to the illegal and unconstitutional use of a pre-emptive strike without UN approval to the growing list of Bush administration war crimes. And recent statements by Rice, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz clearly indicate that the Bushies really were not certain of their "evidence." Tens of thousands of Iraqis and a couple of hundred of coalition soldiers are dead based on a colossal lie.