Duelfer Report and President Bush confirm there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq

• A new report from the chief U.S. weapon hunter in Iraq confirms what has been known for months: Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction when invaded by the United States.
• This is an important finding, if only because President Bush made the presence of such weapons the foundation for his decision to go to war against Iraq.
• "Saddam Hussein is a man who told the world he wouldn't have weapons of mass destruction, but he's got them,'' Bush said on Nov. 3, 2002.
• He and Vice President Dick Cheney flatly asserted in the months leading up to the war that Hussein had chemical and biological weapons and that he was pursuing efforts to acquire nuclear weapons.
• "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.
• There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us,'' Cheney said on Aug. 26, 2002.
• On Thursday, in the wake of the release of a report the chief U.S. weapons hunter, Charles Duelfer, President Bush finally acknowledged that this was not true.
• "The Duelfer report showed that Saddam was systematically gaming the system, using the U.N. oil-for-food program to try to influence countries and companies in an effort to undermine sanctions,'' Bush said.
• "He was doing so with the intent of restarting his weapons program once the world looked away.''
• It's certain that Bush and Kerry will argue the merits of the decision to attack Iraq throughout the remainder of the campaign.
• And it's certain the debate will play out in black and white terms, Kerry arguing that Bush was wrong, Bush asserting his decision was the right one.
• But as Duelfer and others who have had the opportunity to sort through the mists have shown, simplistic bombast can't explain what was actually going on in Iraq at the time.