Here’s a question which I’ve been thinking about the past few days.

The main justification for the Iraq invasion used by the Bush administration before the war was that Saddam had WMD, and Bush said that the only way for Iraq to stop the U.S. from invading was to destroy all the WMD and prove that with documents and inspection, under U.N. resolution 1441.

Iraq said that they had destroyed their WMD, and despite scorn and lies from Bush, it turns out that he had, in fact, destroyed them.

Despite Bush’s bizarre claim that “we gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn’t let them in,” the fact is that the inspectors were allowed into Iraq, and later said that they found no evidence that there were WMDs (now confirmed by the Coalition™ search teams) and there was no evidence that Iraq was even obstructing inspections (makes sense, as they had nothing to hide), and that it was Bush who demanded the inspectors leave Iraq, and Bush was lying about their findings.

Iraq forked over documents which they said showed that the weapons were destroyed. The Bush administration scoffed and said the documents were worthless and an attempt to buy time to entrench themselves–but at that time, the Bush administration was lying a blue streak.

So here’s the question: now that we’ve gone over Iraq with a fine-toothed comb, has anyone looked back on those documents Iraq gave us and checked–objectively, not in classic Bush style–whether or not the documents presented were in fact real and what Bush said he needed to stop the war?

If the documents were in fact what was demanded, then it would be the case that Iraq actually did comply with UNR 1441, and Bush invaded illegally. Unless the lame excuse, “I didn’t believe him when he complied” is acceptable to the world.