"I'm sorry TB, but you have got it wrong. And I feel like a fool because I was misled by my own government as much as I was, in spite of the fact that I consider myself pretty skeptical and capable of reading between the lines."

Hmm, I never thought anyone knew what Saddam had in terms of WMD. All I got was there were clues that indicated various aspects of a WMD program. And that Blix after 12 years of UN inspections could not verify that Saddam had complied with cease fire treaty- that was pretty damning to me. I guess, since it appeared to me that Blix was against the war, that I put more weigh on this claim, then maybe was warranted.

I also thought there was likely more information that was classified that could be relevant to the matter. Later it was revealed that some of this was human intel and Jordian and other middle eastern country Intel- where I was mainly thinking it was American intel via satellite/plane recon or electronic.
So, I suppose I was successful misdirected in this regard- though I can't draw a firm definitive conclusion because there is still a fair amount of intel still classified.

Many people put a lot of significant when during invasion Rummy pointed to a map pointing to locations of potential chemical weapons attack zones. I don't. It seemed pretty obvious to me that the only value of Rummy doing such a thing as showing a tactic battlefield operations was mostly to do with some kind of misdirection. Perhaps this was only that these locations were highly suspected, and they wanted the enemy to perhaps move them- and thereby be able to destroy them in transit- or something entirely different.

Anyhow, I didn't feel misled by Whitehouse- most of what I heard from Whitehouse was already in the public record- I don't recall anything announced by Whitehouse that I already didn't know about from other sources. I'm not doubting that Whitehouse did not direct certain things to be de-classified, and once publicly released could then use them in public statements.
So speeches by president were mostly interesting in terms of what he considered worthy of pointing out as important. The issue of Niger was interesting in this regard. Why exactly did he say "according to British intelligence". Was it because he wanted mask the British claim about the 45 min thing. And/or did he say that because their was strong opposition from CIA? The Niger thing was interesting because there was also some kind of French intel connection. But despite all the hysteria of over Niger- that was, as far as I know, still is a valid relevant bit of information.

"And a skeptical and irrational leftist reaction to the conservative dogma has now arisen that will make impossible any sort of mutual, reasoned response to the nation's problems. And I blame the administration's policy of deliberately driving an ideological wedge between the American people to promote their own domestic agenda for this. And for what? For what?"

Oh, elections and things like that I suppose.
But I think it's obvious that "irrational leftist" [as well as some rightwingers] were always against the war in Iraq and more of the "irrational leftist" were against the war in Afghanistan than some of the rightwingers, but in any case they were constant in this regard. There are of course always unexpected things that happen in any war- this include good things and of course terrible things. Anyhow as they say "mistakes were made" and these dishearten some but mainly "gave a louder voice" to those in opposition from beginning.

"The one thing we can know for sure is that this debacle is wholly due to those responsible for it. After six years of squandered goodwill and totally unopposed control of the nation the truth has now become undeniable and the blame obvious. Of course you're glad there's an alternative media. That's the only place your world-view can be found intact anymore. Don't mistake that for a mainstream media conspiracy."

I don't agree, but it doesn't matter. The point is that we should take a course that allows the military the most support we can and gives the Iraqis best chance of having a country in the future instead of a failed state.