Paul Begala pretty much nails it here :

BEGALA: Back in June, President Bush was asked if he still thought Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction when he invaded Iraq — quote — “Wait until Charlie gets back with the final report,” he replied. Well, Mr. President, Charlie’s back. That would be Charles Duelfer, Mr. Bush’s chief weapons hunter.

He’s written a 1,000-page report that concludes that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction, and the threat he posed was diminishing, not, as the president said, grave and growing. U.S. officials told today’s “Washington Post” that the report concludes that Saddam — quote — “did not possess or have concrete plans to develop nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons” — unquote.

No weapons, no threat, case closed, which means one of two things must be true. Either Mr. Bush deliberately misled the American people, or he desperately misjudged the threat, ignoring concrete evidence, diverting resources from the real war on terror and plunging America into a bloody and unnecessary war in Iraq. Dishonesty or incompetence, you choose, America.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The Washington Post’s assessment of the report shows that the Bushies weren’t right about a damn thing :

The 1991 Persian Gulf War and subsequent U.N. inspections destroyed Iraq’s illicit weapons capability and, for the most part, Saddam Hussein did not try to rebuild it, according to an extensive report by the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq that contradicts nearly every prewar assertion made by top administration officials about Iraq.

Charles A. Duelfer, whom the Bush administration chose to complete the U.S. investigation of Iraq’s weapons programs, said Hussein’s ability to produce nuclear weapons had “progressively decayed” since 1991. Inspectors, he said, found no evidence of “concerted efforts to restart the program.”

The findings were similar on biological and chemical weapons. While Hussein had long dreamed of developing an arsenal of biological agents, his stockpiles had been destroyed and research stopped years before the United States led the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Duelfer said Hussein hoped someday to resume a chemical weapons effort after U.N. sanctions ended, but had no stocks and had not researched making the weapons for a dozen years.

Depite all the goalpost moving over the last two years, Saddam Hussein didn’t even have any “weapons of mass destruction related program activities”.

Am I the only one who’s not shocked by the fact that the report by Charles Duelfer pretty much comes to the same conclusions as the reports by David Kay, Hans Blix, Scott Ritter, etc.? After the fourth or fifth time, you’d think the fact that Saddam didn’t pose a threat to us would sink into Bush’s head. Who wants to bet that Bush’s answer will be the same one he gives when asked about global warming? (“We don’t have all the facts yet, but I look forward to hearing from the experts.”)