>Fickle?!?!
>Prime Minister Blair's "public" never was ambivalent about the war, at least as seen from here.

Fickle is not the same thing as ambivalent.

>Immediately after the war polls showed that his rating was soaring, that's true. But it was always credited to be because he stood hard and fast by his convictions through merciless criticism AND because it turned out to be a nice short low-casualty war. And of course it was fully anticipated that the WMD would be QUICKLY located, the warriors and the politicians all saying it wouldn't be long.

I don't remember any warriors or politicians making a prediction of when WMDs would be found.

>While the public may be "fickle", my observation is that it is so primarily on the more 'trivial' matters and certainly not on issues like war.

The same thing happened here before the 1991 Gulf War. Public opionion quickly changed once the war started.

>I recollect you saying that you would be greatly upset if there proved to be no WMD. I assume you haven't fickled on that position.

No, I haven't. If we don't find WMDs, I am going to be extremely skeptical of anything the administration says. Their credibility will be near zero.

>As regards the Hersh article... does he not provide significant new (to the average Joe like you/me) information regarding intelligence "sources"?... Does he not enlighten us as regards the usurpation of the CIA/DIA/State Dept by some who 'needed' to find skeletons where none were?... Am I p*ssed (adjusted to comply with UT pornography filters) off that the Cabal calls themselves the Cabal - yes because I invented it and they stole it!

In that article, didn't Hersh cite many unnamed sources? I found it ironic that he was criticizing the administration for believing sources who at least we got to know the names of and see (the former head of Iraq's nuclear program and Saddam's son-in-laws), while we are expected to believe his sources, who remain unknown to us. Isn't that hypocritical?

You should have taken out a trademark on "Cabal", as it applies to that group :-).