Driver, What's the Fare?

"Drogin's account of the search for weapons of mass destruction after Baghdad fell would be hilarious were the facts not scandalous and the implications not tragic. That missile spotted by analysts of satellite imagery? It was a rotating steel drum for drying corn. The missile photographed from the air? Chickens in Iraq are raised in long, low half-cylinder coops. Some weapons searchers finally had T-shirts printed with the U.N. symbol and the words "Ballistic Chicken Farm Inspection Team." In the middle of the night in Baghdad, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, Scooter Libby, was calling from Washington with precise geographic coordinates to guide searchers to Iraq's hidden WMDs. The supposed hiding place was in Lebanon." - Curveball, Swing and A Miss By George Will

War is complicated. Good intent is easy to misalign and politics of self a greater enemy both on the front lines and back at home. I look forward to reading this book and find the fact that our intelligence apparatus was conned by a taxi driver the most frightening plot I have ever come across... putting Poe, Lovecraft and King to shame.

My opinion however, on the fact that a war in the middle east was enviable stands unchanged. Saddam after all was as ignorant to his lack of WMD as our intelligence heads were. Between his aspirations and that of Islam this storm was coming regardless of the wishes of the UN, the Pope and those heads of nation commerce that cried out for business to carry on as usual.

However it is clear that Bush and Cheney mishandled this war, mishandled the intelligence and even placed profit above security. But then this has been the course since the first Bush stopped short of what could have ended this miss long ago. To be fair to Bush he did inherit a disabled and unfunded intelligence apparatus. Expecting his time in office to be business as usual instead he has been thrust into what should have been his call to greatness.