Incomprehension

Chapter and verse, today's New York Times excerpts Michael R. Gordon's and Bernard E. Trainor's Cobra II: The Secret Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq, scheduled for publication Tuesday, to show that Saddam feared more than assault by U.S. troops rebellion by Shiites to the south and disgruntled tribes elsewhere, presumably like the Marsh Arabs--ironically the sort of dissolution his own Sunni are now fomenting. The unspoken point in the excerpt appears to be Saddam's recognition that at any moment Iraq could blow into its component parts--something the U.S. should have known. Moreover, as reported elsewhere, Saddam maintained the fiction of WMD to intimidate his enemies at home and in Iran. Previously unreported, I believe, is that Saddam didn't even tell his own generals that the WMD warehouses were bare until three weeks before the U.S. invasion; their morale crashed.

But he did tell the UN inspectors they same thing and provide information the U.S. and Britain ignored in their illegal, immoral war of aggression [the dog's characterization, not Gordon's and Trainor's--at least not in this excerpt].

Gordon and Trainor base this portion of their book on a secret Pentagon history, an expurgated version of which is apparently scheduled for release. We've paid for the whole thing with blood and treasure. We should get it all--the military historians' assessment of what happened when the Supreme Delusionist [George W Bush] and his sucker fish side pal, Blairing Tone, tangled in the sand with the Grand Illusionist [Saddam of the WMDs(not)]. Shake 'n' Bake.