WOULD YOU HAVE SUPPORTED THE WAR IN IRAQ HAD YOU KNOWN THE COST?

Surfing the web and TV AM shows one fact leaps out: We had bad CIA info on almost every level concerning Iraq. We had bad intel from the CIA and FBI before 9/11 too. I think the big item coming out of all this is that we, and Bush, trusted information from people who had already demonstrated their incompetence. Q: Would you have supported the Iraq War knowing it was going to cost $100 billion?

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE FBI AND THE CIA? The FBI bungles domestic crime and the CIA bungles international crime. All of us knew this, except for President Bush and both houses of Congress. Everybody believed the "intel" and endorsed the actions when we embarked on the Iraq War based on "intel". I include myself in this.

Ever hear of the Blind Doll?, you wind it up and it walks into walls? The wound up FBI had a spy in their midst for 25 years, was key in the Waco slaughter after KNOWING there was no evidence against David Koresh; together with the AFT they murdered Randy Weaver's son and wife, and then the FBI promoted the perp to Deputy Director; they nailed the career criminal Richard Jewell for the Atlanta Olympic bombing, and on and on and on. Yet both Congress, Bush, and the Defense Department relied on their information hoping that this time they weren't walking into another wall, because they had "improved". To what? Walking off the curb?

As a backup everybody, INCLUDING CONGRESS, relied on the CIA, notorious for their bungling. An old hand CIA agent is testifying before a Congressional Committee. They are astounded by his appearance. He has a fake leg, hook on one arm, and a patch over one eye. A Republican Patriot type asks him how he got hurt.

"I lost my leg after I ran from the Taliban in Afghanistan, and when they caught me they cut off my leg with a chain saw" said the agent. "I lost my hand when disguised as an Arab I reached for some food in Saddam Hussein's HQ and a Saddam henchman hacked off my hand with an axe."

"What about the patch on your eye?"

"I lost it when a pigeon shit in it," said the agent. "It was my first day with the hook."

And like the agent with the hook, or the crew that identified the Chinese Embassy in Kosovo as a target, the CIA thrashed around Iraq doing a great job of identifying targets but gouging out their eyes when it came to seeing the bad sewage system, decayed electrical system, and 1940s oil infrastructure. Everyone believed the war might cost $20 billion tops.

Why did we all believe? I don't know. We just did. Having said all this the other evidence is clear that we should have ended things for Saddam there, that we were right to do so, that the job is worth doing, and that if we succeed we will have struck a blow to radical Islam from which they may never recover and make our children's and grandchildren's lives safer and better. We can be proud.

But our system and our President are something else. Let us all look forward to a free election in Iraq where Paul Bremmer will supply the populace with the latest in punch card ballot systems.