TigerHawk
Pajamas Media links to the post by Tigerhawk (above) about confusion over WMD within the Iraqi military itself. (Details coming in soon to be published book by New York Times reporters.) All very interesting.
UPDATE: Slate's article on this is well worth a read. It deals specifically with the interception of conversations about "nerve gas" that Powell played during the famous UN briefing. The conversation is now thought to have had an innocent explanation, but it is easy to see why this would not have been thought of, when until 2002 Saddam himself encouraged his military leaders to believe he did have WMD. Slate then ends with this summary:
And so not only is the mystery of the intercepts solved, we're left with a ragged tale of crossed signals and multiple misunderstandings that may help explain why this war happened. Saddam Hussein had accumulated a vast record of deceptions; George W. Bush, by this time, was firmly intent on regime change through invasion. Almost everyone in the U.S. national-security establishment was predisposed to view all intelligence materials through both prisms—Saddam's deception and Bush's intentions—and the rays converged on toppling Baghdad.
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