As I suspected it would, my post from earlier today about the Iraq spurred a storm of emails, many heated and indignant. But there also seemed to be more than a bit of confusion about just I was trying to say -- no doubt because of my lack of clarity.

So, on the main issue: We never would have gotten inspectors back into Iraq without a credible threat of force. But once the inspectors were in, they quickly began undermining the case that there was any serious WMD program or capability in Iraq. Had we pursued the inspections process in good faith, which we would have done had our true goal been eliminating WMDs (or confirming they weren't there), we probably would have avoided this current mess because the war never would have started.

That was my point.