The Duelfer Report I

The spin on Charles Duelfer's report on WMD is predictably that there were no "stockpiles," therefore the rationale for the war was wrong and (implicitly) the rationale for a Bush second term is undercut. The rationale for the war as I understood it was essentially pre-emptive: based on our best intelligence, Saddam probably has WMD (no one knew for sure... that's what relying on intelligence means), which also obviously meant that there was a chance that he didn't have them, but we can't take that risk post-9/11. Fisking Duelfer's 1500 page report would obviously take a lot of time, but it's surprising to me that no mainstream media reports so far have appeared to quote the very first sentence of Duelfer's section titled "Key Findings." That sentence reads:

"Saddam Husayn so dominated the Iraqi Regime that its strategic intent was his alone. He wanted to end sanctions while preserving the capability to reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction (WMD) when sanctions were lifted."

That seems like a real threat to me. Isn't it a fact that many countries, including France and Russia (and including much of the left in America), were pushing to lift sanctions against Iraq in the late 1990s and early 2000s? So, doesn't that mean that Saddam was poised to reconstitute his WMD programs?

If the Left had its way, Saddam would still be in power, the sanctions would have been lifted, and he would be well on his way to having WMDs. Why does any of this undercut the rationale for war?

UPDATE: The "Key Findings" of the Duelfer report, in fact, states that "Iraq was within striking distance of a de facto end to the sanctions regime, both in terms of oil exports and the trade embargo, by the end of 1999."