There are increasing reports from U.S. and foreign sources that the intelligence information about Iraqi chemical and biological weapons was "shaky" at best, deliberately skewed to fit the requirements of the President at worst.
An example: Colin Powell was pushed to use a speech written by the Vice President's team, which included information about Iraqi software used to plan attacks. The CIa couldn't back that allegation up, so Powell refused.
At the time Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld claimed that the Iraqis were stockpiling chemical weapons, the Defense Intelligence Agency could find no reliable proof of those activities.
The top Marine Corps officer in Iraq, Lt. Gen. James Conway has since stated that the Intelligence they were provided regarding Iraqi weapons was just plain wrong, and DIA and State Department officials are claiming that Intelligence analysis was being forced "down from the top".
It looks like we're about to have the same problem in Iran, the Secretary of Defense's next target for a take over.
It is becoming clear that the strategy of the current Administration is to keep Americans whipped into a war frenzy in order to achieve its own ends, which begs the question: Where will it stop?
I've finished the first semester at SHSU and started on the second, and all I have to say is that I'm totally exhausted by the effort. According to my estimates, the assignments for my two classes required 45,000 words written in various formats.
The summer load is a bit lighter, but still heavy -- I'm expecting 20,000 words, but the time is compressed to 10 weeks from 16 weeks. So I'm spending the summer season reading about Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap, and how they managed to outfight two major powers, mostly by simply surviving and a series of colossal political blunders by the French and United States.
It isn't particularly fun reading, but then war should be a depressing topic. Otherwise we'd have more of them.