What the mainstream media aren't saying about the Duelfer Report

A quote from Mickey Kaus' Kausfiles, from Stuart Buck:

"If a man who is known to have killed many thousands of people says he has a gun, acts like he has a gun, and convinces everyone around him he has a gun, and starts waving it around and behaving recklessly, the police are justified in shooting him (even if it turns out later he just had a black bar of soap). Similarly, according to the Duelfer report, Saddam seems to have intentionally convinced other countries, and his own generals, that he had WMDs. He also convinced much of the U.S. government. If we reacted accordingly and he turns out not to have had WMDs, whose fault is that?"

We sure need more of this kind of calm, lawyerly analysis, instead of the breathless nonsense you see on CNN and in the New York Times. Most of this stuff is common sense, but God forbid we apply tried and true rules of discourse to the debate on the War on Terror.