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U.S. Suspects It Received False Iraq Arms Tips : " Frustrated at the failure to find Saddam Hussein's suspected stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, U.S. and allied intelligence agencies have launched a major effort to determine if they were victims of bogus Iraqi defectors who planted disinformation to mislead the West before the war."

You know, you'd think that they'd have considered this possibility earlier. At least, you'd hope so.

Although senior CIA officials insist that defectors were only partly responsible for the intelligence that triggered the decision to invade Iraq in March, other intelligence officials now fear that key portions of the prewar information may have been flawed. The issue raises fresh doubts as to whether illicit weapons will be found in Iraq.

Oh, goody! "Fresh doubts". Maybe at some point people will actually realize that the emperor is buck naked.

As evidence, officials say former Iraqi operatives have confirmed since the war that Hussein's regime sent "double agents" disguised as defectors to the West to plant fabricated intelligence. In other cases, Baghdad apparently tricked legitimate defectors into funneling phony tips about weapons production and storage sites.

Seriously, somebody really needs to figure out whether the problem was that the intelligence people didn't spot this or whether the political folks ignored them. My money's on "ignored them". These defectors were telling Wolfowitz, Cheney, and Rumsfeld what they wanted to hear, so they were believed.

But what about David Kay's much-ballyhooed mission to find "the stuff"?

Evidence collected over the last two months suggests that Hussein's regime abandoned large-scale weapons development and production programs in favor of a much smaller "just in time" operation that could churn out poison gases or germ agents if they were suddenly needed, survey group members say. The transition supposedly took place between 1996 and 2000.

But survey group mobile collection teams are still unable to prove that any nerve gases or microbe weapons were produced during or after that period, the officials said. Indeed, the weapons hunters have yet to find proof that any chemical or bio-warfare agents were produced after 1991.
(all emphasis mine)

So we went to war for...a lie? A mistake? Wishful thinking? What do we do now, say "oops, sorry" to the families of the 37,000 or so dead Iraqis and 330-odd American soliders?

Here's an idea. Let's get the idiots currently running the country out of the White House. Here's my favorite theory on that.