Hmm. Oddly enough, this very morning I re-posted a journal entry of mine from Jan 17, 2003. It used to be called "No Blood For Oil" (as a tribute to the millions of other trite blog posts of the same title), but this morning I re-titled it as "I Told You So."

http://www.livejournal.com/users/halioffirpine/2003/01/17/

I suppose technically one could say that I didn't claim Iraq had no WMD's either... just that we had no credible evidence thereof whatsoever.

Pax,
Matthew

I think he actually meant "no one [who matters]." It's one of those journalistic shorthand techniques for those in the know.

Personally, I opposed the war because I thought Saddam did have all kinds of weapons, and I wanted sanctions lifted to give him a chance to establish a unified Arab state in the Mideast under his iron fist. That's right, I'm what Andrew Sullivan would call a "Saddamite."

Okay, actually that previous paragraph was a lie.

To steal from paperback thriller writer Sam Llewelyn (can't spell those Welsh names worth a damn), in a more sensible class system than ours, Chris Hitchens would be living under a bridge drinking Special Brew and struggling to save money for a bet on a horse race. And his opinion would no longer matter as he would be one of those nonexistent people to those "in the know."

Hey, I didn't think he had any, and I said so repeatedly in several public forums. if I could be buggered trawling Google, I would probably find one of my old comments to that effect.

If I recall correctly, My primary argument was that it would have been completely out of character for Saddam. He was a greedy, selfish, power-mad fucker, and he knew that pissing off the US would just get him invaded and deposed. One sure-fire way to achieve that end would be to keep developing bioweapons and nukes.

Essentially, developing WMDs would have been at odds with him trying to keep his power. I just didn't think he would be that stupid.

Seems I was right.