Now there is more discussion about the failure to discover weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Was available intelligence distorted to make the case for war or did we have a failure in our intelligence gathering and interpretation, or both? From having watched and listened to President Bush and others such as Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld, my personal take is that they hyped the threat posed by Saddam Hussein to the US and lead the US public to believe that Iraq possessed massive quantities of biological and even nuclear weapons at the ready.
One specific intelligence item that is the focus of scrutiny that was cited by the President as evidence of evil intent was the reported attempt by Iraq to buy uranium from Africa. This evidence was based on forged documents that the CIA knew were forged and the question has arisen about whether or not the CIA alerted the White House to the forgery. It is hard for me to believe that they did not. The Mercury News report from yesterday heightens the suspicion that the White House really knew the documents were forgeries, but cited them as evidence anyway.
No matter what we find two months after the declared end of the 'war', it certainly will be hard to believe that Iraq had any biological or nuclear weapons poised and ready to strike in "45 minutes" as claimed by Tony Blair in the British dossier. Again, we have what appears to be another pronouncement that the sky is falling. So now what?
11:51:51 AM 
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