If no banned weapons are found in Iraq, then one of three things is also likely true.

1. There are no weapons in Iraq because Saddam Hussein hid them so well they couldn't be deployed during the war, and so even the captured members of Iraq's house of cards don't know where they are (funny Hussein didn't do as well with his billions in ill-gotten cash and gold);

2. There are no weapons because they were destroyed shortly before the war, as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld recently mused, meaning that the mere threat of war was enough to contain Iraq, and thus the fighting -- and the deaths of more than 160 Americans, nearly 50 Britons and untold numbers of Iraqis -- were unnecessary. Or worse, the weapons were looted or otherwise dispersed in the chaos that followed the war, meaning that the war accomplished exactly the opposite of its goals.

3. There are no banned weapons in Iraq because Saddam Hussein abandoned or destroyed them years ago, as his government claimed to the very end (and as at least one member of Bush's Defense Policy Board has speculated). In other words, Iraq did not, as the Bush administration claimed, pose a clear and present danger to the United States.

If the third thing is true, then one of three things is also likely true:

1. The U.S. intelligence services were just plain wrong about the existence of WMD, and thus cannot be fully trusted to provide the critical information to safeguard us from threats abroad, as they were unequal to the domestic task prior to 9/11;

2. The intelligence services were right, and told the Bush administration that there was no WMD threat but their findings were ignored and/or politicized by the administration to justify war, as some current and former intelligence analysts have complained,

3. The Bush administration was determined to go to war and would have done so whatever the intelligence services told them.

If the third thing is true, then one of three things is also likely true;

1. The Bush administration believed that in the end, its claims about Iraq would be borne out, regardless of the intelligence (perhaps believing exaggeration-prone Iraqi exiles over hard-working CIA analysts);

2. The WMD claims were simply a marketing ruse to sway a public that otherwise would not have supported a war of "Iraqi liberation", and so the intelligence was irrelevant;

3. The administration knew its assertions were dubious or wrong, and deliberately lied to the American people, regardless of the expense in lives and dollars that could continue for years to come, for some other reason.

If the third thing is true, then one of three things is also likely true.

1. The Bush administration justified misleading the American people because it feels it must fight the war on terror on its own terms, regardless of the proprieties, in order to save American lives;

2. The Bush administration has granted itself the power to deceive the American people and imperil American soldiers because it is emboldened by the sheer power of empire;

3. or the Bush administration has committed American lives and treasure for some other, perhaps more ignoble, reason (to distract from the blighted economy? To make a show of fighting the war on terror? To secure Bush's reelection?)

And if the third thing is true, then one of three things is also likely true.

1. The untruths about WMD were foisted upon the White House by the Pentagon, through it's secretive "Office of Special Plans" or from some other quarter within the neoconservative core of the administration, and the president was brought along for the ride, (in which case the White House should investigate);

2. The untruths were a shared commodity of the White House and Pentagon (something members of Congress, including Florida Rep. Porter Goss, already plan to investigate);

3. The massaging of facts came from the White House and worked its way from the political wing on down.

And if the third thing is true, and the war was some sort of Karl Rovian calculation by which the White House placed politics before propriety, and the power of this president ahead of the lives of America's fighting men and women, then the fact that most Americans don't seem to give a damn whether or not the weapons are ever found, as most polls indicate, could be the most damning indictment of American democracy yet. A thousand Gulfs of Tonkin couldn't be more ignominious than a public that can't be bothered to ask why its soldiers have died.

Joy-Ann Reid is a writer living in Florida. Her column appears periodically in the Miami Herald. She can be contacted atmailto:joyannreid@hotmail.com.

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