HONOLULU -- U.S. Sen. John Rockefeller came out of a hearing in Washington on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, or WMD, to ask an intriguing, if rhetorical, question: "Did we misread it, or did they mislead us?"
The senator is not the only one to speculate that Saddam Hussein's nuclear, biological and chemical weapons never existed, or have not existed for a long time, or existed only in small stocks. An adviser to the Central Intelligence Agency, former Reagan and previous Bush officials, Time magazine, a United Nations weapons inspector, the author Francis Fukuyama, and the Economist magazine have all wondered if Hussein's weapons were an elaborate ruse.
Why, they ask, did Hussein deceive Western intelligence agencies and leaders, including President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, when he could have said "I don't have any, come see for yourself," and saved Iraq from invasion and the rising toll of American, allied and Iraqi deaths?