[techweenie]

Pretty much nonsense.

Bush1 did a good job of destroying WMD manufacturing capability. The notion that Saddam had a lot of WMD was part of the propaganda wave to get upport for the invasion in the first place. He didn't have it. If he had, he would have used it.

The notion that 5 or 6 terrorists are in a country of 26 million is the thinnest in a long line of thin of rationalizations for attacking it. Not to mention most of the anecdotes are just plain wrong.

Abu Nidal was a bad guy in the 80s, but no act were ascribed to his organization since 1986, excepting the assassination of two minor middle eastern officials.

Abu Abbas -- another bad guy who hadn't done anything since "masterminding" a cruise ship hijacking in 1985.

Abdul Rahman Yasin. American citizen. Not "al Quaeda." Just another anti-semite whose #1 target was Jewish neighborhoods. Fled to Iraq after 1993 WTC bombing, where they threw him in prison.

It seems that no conservative ever manages to retain the fact that "al Qaeda" is a name invented by the CIA in 2001, and didn't exist before, and doesn't really "exist" as a membership organization now.

Al-Salahat is a suspect in the 1988 Pan Am bombing.

Abu Musab al Zarqawi. Now ther's a mystery. not an OBL ally, but a rival, and as Newsweek said: "As it turns out, the report of medical treatment wasn't even credible to begin with. According to U.S. intelligence, Zarqawi had a leg amputated in Baghdad. Except that most sources now believe Zarqawi is equipped with two working legs. As Newsweek colorfully put in in early 2004, "The stark fact is that we don’t even know for sure how many legs Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi has, let alone whether the Jordanian terrorist, purportedly tied to al Qaeda, is really behind the latest outrages in Iraq."

So even if all one terrorist and five former terrorists were hanging out there, they don't add up to a reason to sacrifice thousands of U.S. lives.