(From a liberal:)

By Richard Cohen, Washington Post

Shortly before the United States went to war in Iraq, I was in contact with a former member of the American intelligence community. This is what he told me: Saddam Hussein had no nuclear weapons program, no chemical or biological weapons program to speak of, and no link to al Qaeda. He said that if America invaded, it would cost us "perhaps 1,000 casualties" and would lead to prolonged "terrorism and harassment." I thanked him very much for his views -- and urged the United States to attack anyway. Along with Don Quixote, I sometimes feel that facts are the enemy of truth.

The record will show, however, that as war approached I was expressing second thoughts. I urged patience since it was becoming obvious that my source might be right: Hussein's various arms programs either didn't exist or were being hyped by the administration. In short, I knew that the most alarming case against Saddam Hussein -- that he was an imminent threat to the United States -- was a lie.

Paradoxically, that basic fact becomes increasingly obscure the more one commission or another looks into America's epic intelligence failures. No doubt they were legion and no doubt they contributed to a public case for war, but the inadvertent impression left by these commissions -- buttressed by the aw-shucks demeanor of the Bush administration -- that something like an act of God led America to war is just plain ridiculous. America went to war because George Bush wanted to go to war…

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