Liberal Hawk Revisionism?

To add on brief point to Ezra’s follow-up to his merciless demonstration of how many ways liberal hawks erred, wasn’t Pollack’s original case based primarily on the alleged threat Saddam posed to the United States, rather than democratization? It seems to me that Packer’s characterization of the relevant argument as “Saddam has used weapons of mass destruction and has never stopped trying to develop them” is a little disingenuous; a more accurate rendering, it seems to me, would be “Saddam poses a major threat to the United States because he has WMDs and will inevitably acquire more fairly quickly.” I don’t recall a lot of liberal hawks claiming that Hussein didn’t have WMDs, even as the inspections were turning up bupkis, but maybe someone has some examples. A lot of liberal hawks, like hawks in general, claimed after the fact that Saddam’s lack of WMDs wasn’t a big deal, but I don’t think that argument was made contemporaneously very much.

…I ask, Atrios answers.