To do that, you had to discount the Intel from ALL of the Western Intel agencies about Saddams WMD capabilty..
No, you didn't have to discount it. I know that for many that was the elephant in the room, all determining. But for others it was one factor among many, plus, like all factors, open to different weighting. Plenty of people had sufficient foresight to argue against it, including Euterpe and me. I have posted before that the only thing about the way Iraq played out that surprised me was the looting, although that probably occurred to someone somewhere. Everything else was easy enough to anticipate if one was disposed to look coldly at both pros and cons. I'll grant you that those arguments did not get much representation on this thread so maybe some didn't notice them or forgot about them, but they were out there.
Had Saddam actually had the WMD capability and had we not removed him when we did, would we be worse off than we are now? Maybe, but not necessarily. And for that factor to warrant elephant status, you'd have to be able to demonstrate that we necessarily would, which cannot be done even with the benefit of hindsight.
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