Since the war in Iraq ended, supporters and critics alike have reached a near-consensus that the main reason given for the U.S.-led operation -- the threat posed by Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction -- was baseless. U.S. President George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair insist that it's just a matter of time before those weapons are found, retroactively justifying the war, but to no avail.
Judging by polls, letters to editors and online exchanges, the general public thinks that the facts we have now justify nothing but skepticism. Teams of U.N. inspectors failed to find WMD in Iraq in the months before the war. Occupying forces have failed to find them since the war. Therefore, people conclude, Iraq did not pose -- in fact, could not have posed -- the threat of which it was accused. Is that conclusion warranted?
There have been varied responses to the case of the missing WMD. Critics say it proves the so-called preemptive war was indefensible all along (how can you preempt the nonexistent?) The war's supporters, meanwhile, are divided. A few may have lost faith in the righteousness of the cause. More, though, have merely changed their grounds for supporting it. The war was justified, the logic now goes, because of the domestic horrors perpetrated by the Hussein regime. The advertised "war of preemption" quickly became a "war of liberation" as the weeks rolled by, and what emerged from the desert landscape was not weapons of mass destruction but mass graves.