On the Winds Of Change blog, Armed Liberal recommends Thomas Friedman's latest column:

Finding Iraq's W.M.D.'s is necessary to preserve the credibility of the Bush team, the neocons, Tony Blair and the C.I.A. But rebuilding Iraq is necessary to win the war. I won't feel one whit more secure if we find Saddam's W.M.D.'s, because I never felt he would use them on us. But I will feel terribly insecure if we fail to put Iraq onto a progressive path. Because if that doesn't happen, the terrorism bubble will reinflate and bad things will follow. Mr. Bush's credibility rides on finding W.M.D.'s, but America's future, and the future of the Mideast, rides on our building a different Iraq. We must not forget that.

While Armed Liberal is right that this is one of Friedman's better efforts, I think Friedman misses an angle on this. The WMD argument was adopted not because it wouldn't sell with the American people; Bosnia and Kosovo demonstrated that the American public was willing to go to war for humanitarian reasons.

The WMD argument was adopted because it was the only one that could get traction internationally. The UNSC was clearly willing to tolerate genocide (Rwanda anyone?), and would not have been receptive to the "He needs killin'" argument. A petition based on human rights violations or the need for democratic reform in the Middle East would have alienated, rather than inspired cooperation from, the Arab powers in the region, their own records on good government and human rights being suspect at best.

But when you said "Saddam should not have nukes", everyone nods, from Tony Blair to Prince Abdullah. Yes, that would certainly be a bad thing. Even Chirac, who previously sold nukes to Iraq, found himself forced to agree (at least until it came time to back it up with action). The UNSC was even on record, having resolved several times over that Saddam must not have nukes (or other WMDs).

So when it came time to sell this to the UN, the primary argument was over WMDs. But at the time Bush started making this argument, with the speech to the UN on Sept 12, 2002, the US public was already more-or-less sold on the idea of regime change; it was just a month later that, under pressure of an imminent election, Congress authorized the use of military force.

In that context, Friedman's point about Bush needing to find WMDs to salvage his credibility misses the mark. I've yet to hear of any American voter who supported the war mainly on the basis of the WMD argument, and who now regrets that support. (I do wonder whether Tony Blair feels that way, though.) The people complaining didn't support the war in the first place. With more revelations coming out like yesterday's grisly discovery, as InstaPundit points out, the erstwhile opponents of the war are desperate to reclaim the moral high ground.

The latest polls indicate that a clear majority of the public consider the war justified even if WMDs are never found. It would be diplomatically useful to find Saddam's WMDs, but as far as the voters are concerned, the War in Iraq was worth doing, and well done.