WMDs and the Show "24"

So far this season, the theme of the Fox Television show "24" has focused on the pursuit of a teenager in Los Angeles who is being used as a pawn and has been infected with a deadly virus by big time Mexican drug dealers who want to break their head honcho out of prison. The virus in the kid's body is still dormant, but once its released into the air, estimates are that up to 20 percent of the population of Los Angeles will be killed within a week.

Now I know "24" is pure fiction, but the show does provide some illuminating insight regarding the justification for the war in Iraq, and our current "failure" to find any WMDs there. First of all, it is well worth noting and repeating that prior to the war, no one, not even France and Germany, ever denied that Saddam Hussein had chemical WMDs, and that he had defiantly failed to account for all of them. Second, given the fact that even a small pocket-sized vial of a manufactured virus has the capacity to kill several thousand people within a short amount of time, it should not be surprising that no WMDs have yet to be found in a country that is as big as California. Indeed, given the ease by which these chemicals can be hidden and transported, I wouldn't be totally surprised that chemical weapons may never be found in Iraq. However, the evidence indisputably shows that they were there, and that giving Saddam more time to come clean with them would have been pure folly and against our better interests. On this basis, I maintain my position that the war in Iraq was just, and that President Bush should not feel pressured to admit that any mistake was made or that the course of action he took was wrong.