Isn't it strange that the very same people who were prepared to give the United Nations weapons inspectors months and even years to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq are screaming after just a few weeks that our failure to discover them is proof of a hoax?

--first paragraph of the latest column by syndicated right-wing pundit Mona Charen

No.

Saddam's regime was in power when the UN inspectors were there; it isn't now. U.S. and British forces control the country. They have the run of the place. It should be a hell of a lot easier for them to find what they're looking for than it was for inspectors in the Saddam era, shouldn't it? Soldiers have had no trouble finding horrific prisons and mass graves. Why no WMDs?

And isn't it amazing that the very same people who believe Saddam never had weapons of mass destruction also believe that Hillary found out the truth about Monica only two days before Bill Clinton's grand jury testimony?

--beginning of the second paragraph of Charen's column

No.

Then again, it's hard to answer this question because the group to which Charen refers -- "people who believe Saddam never had weapons of mass destruction" -- simply does not exist. Everyone knows the Kurds were gassed more than a decade ago. Everyone knows Saddam has had banned weapons. The question is whether there were still banned weapons in Iraq at the time of the war (opponents of the war are split on this question) and (more important) whether those weapons, if they existed, posed an imminent threat to America or U.S. interests (two wars, no deployment by Saddam against U.S. troops marching on his own turf -- it sure looks as if he was never going to send anthrax in an ICBM to Disneyland, doesn't it?). And it beats the hell out of me how all this relates to what Hillary Clinton knew, or believed, or couldn't bring herself to believe before her husband fessed up.

Good Lord, is this the best the GOP can do?