> Brian Siano wrote:
>
>> Even antiwar activists were vocal on the point that much of Saddam's WMD
>> armory was real, because we kept commenting on how we'd sold it to him
>> in the first place, and all the U.S had to do to confirm the stockpiles
>> was to check the sales receipts (pace Bill Hicks).
>
> Speak for yourself. Most of the anti-war activists I know were pretty
> skeptical of all the bullshit about Saddam's WMD.
I'd make a clarification here: most antiwar activists I know were skeptical over what _George Bush_ was claiming-- it wasn't based on anything more than a reflexive stance. With a few exceptions, I saw very little substantive argument from the Left that Saddam had no WMDs. (Noam Chomsky might've gone over the weapons inspectors' reports carefully, but Chomsky's exceptional in the best ways.) Most of the people I'd encountered understood that, while Bush was probably exaggerating how much weaponry Saddam had, and his willingness to use it, more likely than not Saddam probably had _something_. As I'd written before, to believe otherwise would have violated common sense; what dictator would give up such weapons?
The point is that the belief that Saddam had WMDs was not unreasonable. And, at the time, if anyone on the Left was denying it entirely, it wasn't based on anything but suspicion of the U.S.'s motives. And up until the invasion, the only way to verify anything was to be there, on site, with the inspectors. So faulting the media for not adopting this particular view, from the vantage of 20/20 hindsight, is sort of disingenuous.