“If somebody could have given you a Lloyds of London guarantee that weapons of mass destruction would not possibly be used, …”

A deliberately chosen phrase to describe an impossible condition. Wolfie’s saying, “In a perfect world, we wouldn’t have had to rush in the way we did …” BUT. But obviously it’s not a perfect world and Lloyd’s never would do such a thing and the only way to be sure Saddam didn’t use WMD was to go in and get rid of Saddam.

Which is what Wolfie basically says in the convoluted sentence before that:

“And I’m not sure based on the evidence we know now that we could have been absolutely convinced that there was no danger, absolutely no danger”

Disentangle the double negatives and you get “if we knew then what we knew now, in fact we WOULD have been concerned about the danger.” Presumably referring to the dozens of chemical warheads that have turned up.

All he’s acknowledging is an option to contemplate “much more support for internal Iraqi opposition and not having the United States take the job on the way we did.” In other words, deal with Saddam now, but have it done less catastrophically. Which was the neo-con plan all along: an invasion/uprising in the southern third of the country followed by a Shi’ite client state under American protection, where democratic reforms and infrastructure rebuilding could be done as an example to the rest of Iraq and the rest of the Muslim world.

So, then, for the anti-Iraq liberals, which gets you going more? Admitting we could have done differently, or not admitting mistakes? Because you’re insisting that both drive you up the wall. It’s not surprising in that case that both demands aren’t getting much response.