EVERYBODY KEEPS EMAILING ME this story about mustard gas being found in Iraq. It appears to be genuine, but it’s hardly news: Saddam gassed people, after all, so we know he had WMD. (Just ask Bill Clinton!) And I don’t intend to make a big deal out of this discovery, because I never regarded WMD as the main reason to go to war. The real reason to go to war was (1) to establish a military and democratic presence in the Arab world (which we’ve done); (2) to make an example of Saddam to intimidate other Arab leaders (which we’ve done); and (3) to cut off Saddam as a source of support — both existing and potential — for terrorists, which we’ve also done. The WMD was a nontrivial issue, and required for playing the UN game (which I always regarded as a mistake) but not, to me, the most important issue.

The WMD was an alligator, but the point of the exercise is to drain the swamp.

UPDATE: Reader Dan Cassaro emails:

That sound you hear is the left ripping up the “Saddam never had WMD” goalposts and moving them back to “Saddam wasn’t a threat the US with 36 old rusty shells”. No matter what we find in Iraq, it won’t be “enough to justify the war.”

Not to people who were unalterably opposed to it from day one.