I still vote for "inept": Okay let's buy into your "third gunman" approach, that we were caught napping on the massive hide-and-go-seek project which Saddam ramped up on short notice. This means we either a) stopped paying attention or b) were duped. Again, which do you prefer? If we buy into your premise (certainly not yours alone) then you'd have to admit that we're not talking about two buckets of enriched uranium, but thousands of missiles and their prospective payload, plus all the material needed to manufacture and reproduce. So, we either ignored or missed great big tractor trailer convoys heading Syria-way and the massive earth-moving projects needed to hide whatever couldn't be transported out. We can catch on to fictitous uranium deals in Niger, but not to these large-scale projects. I find it hard to believe that in addition to our satellites, we had no human intel on these issues.

Regarding whether Bush would sell the war on faulty intel, I'd argue that either it was so "black and white" that he really would use any excuse, or he figured (like nearly all of us) that once in place, we'd be falling over the stuff, thereby providing the shaky premise with its justification. I dunno, it's a bit of a boondoggle that for whatever reason, isn't grabbing all that much purchase for the Dem candidates. Maybe because despite the means, the end was justified; i.e. Saddam simply had to go.