The New York Times, nukular bombs and insufferable wankery.

As I pointed out not that long ago, various members of the wankersphere are currently dry-humping themselves into ecstasy over the recent (and recently-pulled) documents that suggest that that mean ol' Saddam had actual, honest-to-God nuclear devices after all. Or maybe it was just a nuclear "program." Or maybe he was only thinking about it. Whatever.

In any event, the wankersphere is, at the moment, absolutely awash with "I told you so" blathering from countless idiots who still haven't actually located a single weapon of mass destruction but that's not important since they read some stuff on the Web and if it's on the Web, well, by God, it must be true.

Needless to say, those folks have precisely squat in terms of actual evidence but that's not why we're here. Rather, we're going to look at this recent development from a slightly different perspective to arrive, not surprisingly, at pretty much the same conclusion we always do -- that these people are still morons.

(WANKER WARNING: Some of what follows represents a careful, logical and involved rhetorical construction, which means that many of you will undoubtedly lose the thread and get hideously confused. That's OK -- I'm getting used to it by now.)

Rather than dismiss this latest wanker delusion, let us, for the sake of argument, accept it at face value. Yes, let's grant the citizens of Wankerville that what they've uncovered is legit. What exactly does that prove?

Well, if you think way back, it was the Bush administration that was absolutely adamant that Saddam had WMDs. Yes, by God, there was no doubt whatsoever -- Donald Rumsfeld even knew exactly where they were, and so on. But for an administration that was convinced that those WMDs existed, their behaviour was (how shall I put this charitably?) bizarre.

As we all know, part of disarming Saddam involved U.N. inspectors, who spent months crawling all over Iraq, looking for anything untoward. So if you thought the WMDs were really there, it would seem to follow that you'd be a big fan of that whole inspection thing, no? Weirdly, it didn't work out that way.

(Wankers: this is where you might have to hold more than two independent thoughts at one time. So I'll understand it if you bail and wander over to Steve Janke's place.)

So ... rather than supporting the U.N. inspections program, the Bush administration (who, once again, were adamant that Saddam had WMDs) did everything they could to undermine that program. And, contrary to the fiction at the time, the U.N. inspectors were not kicked out of Iraq by Saddam Hussein. Rather, they were prevented from re-entering Iraq by none other than George W. Bush himself.

To summarize then, we had an administration who publicly accused Saddam of having horrific weapons of mass destruction and yet, rather than let the U.N. inspections program run its course, that administration effectively killed the program and, still having located not a single WMD, proceeded to invade Iraq. Which suggests that that same administration, believing full well that WMDs existed in Iraq, nonetheless sent in American troops, who would have been the obvious targets of those aforementioned WMDs.

In other words, if I was an American soldier in the first wave of the Iraq invasion, I would be seriously pissed about having been sent into an allegedly deadly situation by a Commander-in-Chief who did as little as possible to guarantee my safety. Oh, yeah ... I'd be fucking livid, let me tell you. Which leaves us where, exactly?

Where it leaves us is with countless wankers now crowing about how they've been vindicated regarding Iraq and WMDs, yet still being unable to appreciate how, if this is true, that would paint the Bush administration as unspeakably irresponsible and callous when it came to launching the invasion of Iraq in terms of guaranteeing the safety of its own soldiers.

If I was a member of the American military who'd been part of that initial invasion, I'd be looking at all of these idiot wankers high-fiving each other that they've finally been vindicated and saying something like, "Excuse me? Are you actually cheering that that thug Saddam had WMDs? Is that what this is all about? You're literally celebrating the idea that Saddam might have had these weapons, just because it makes you all look a little less imbecilic? You're sitting around, high-fiving one another that our lives were apparently in far more danger, because it makes you look good? Is that what you're doing?"

To which the answer would be, yes, that's exactly what they're doing. See, it's a tradeoff -- your lives versus their right to feel smug and vindicated. And when it comes to making that tradeoff, believe me, it isn't even a tough decision for those folks. They get to feel smug, while you get to keep dying in ever-increasing numbers.

But don't worry -- a few lives or limbs here and there is worth it to make sure the 101st Fighting Keyboarders can feel good about themselves. Sure, you'll continue being killed, but it's a price they're willing to pay.