Peter Galbraith is a longtime lobbyist for an independent Kurdistan and not surprisingly his prescription for extricating ourselves from Iraq is to use American military and political muscle to protect Kurdistan while the rest of Iraq continues to descend into an ever bloodier civil war. Both Galbraith and Salon should have had the honesty to indicate that he is no neutral observer on the matter of Kurdistan.

Galbraith also seems to forget that Southern Iraq has vast oil and natural gas deposits (larger than Kurdistan's) and that no administration is going to blithely walk away from that and hand them over to pro-Iranian extremists. After all control over Iraq's vast oil reserves was one of the main albeit unspoken motivations behind this war. Galbraith can choose to continue to believe in the WMD or spreading democracy rationale but they have never been more than a mere sideshow. Given the current tightness in the oil markets this remains a potent rationale for "staying the course" towards a semi-functional but oil-exporting Iraq and I don't see things changing anytime soon.

Does it really matter what Naji Sabri said and what the French Intelligence services thought when there were UN inspectors on the ground in Iraq? And when every time they followed a lead provided by Iraqi "defectors" they couldn't even find a trace of what was alleged to have been there with their ultra-sensitive scientific instruments?

But that was precisely the problem with UNMOVIC. They were all facts and no heart. The decider knew in his heart that he was right and the scientific instruments were wrong. He looked into Chalabi's eyes and he knew that he was telling the truth. Luckily the media was going through its "patriotism sells" phase and didn't ask any obvious but embarrassing questions.

"If you think about it, maybe there are a few missing pieces to the rationale for war. But doesn't taking Saddam out feel like the right thing?" Stephen Colbert

Michael Bryan's letter entitled "Historical Accuracy" was rather funny. First because it seems to suggest that we should hold George W Bush accountable for his decisions as a responsible and mentally competent adult. And secondly because it suggests that the ulterior motives for invading Iraq are obscure and mysterious.

Anybody who's ever listened to W talk knows that the first assumption is wrong and unfair.

As for the second one let me just list some "random" facts and see if we can't figure out what that mysterious hidden agenda is.

1- World oil production is peaking and demand is accelerating thanks in part to China and India

2- Oil underpins our economy

3- Iraq sits on the worlds second largest proven reserves but because of UN sanctions its production is limited. It should also be noted that even before the sanctions, Iraq never produced as much as it could have in order to keep prices up.

4- Iraq under Saddam was the first Arab country to nationalize its oil industry and was a driving force behind OPEC which strived to increase prices by limiting production.

5- It was dispute over Kuwait exceeding its OPEC quota and pumping oil from the Iraqi portion of an oil field that straddled their mutual frontier that resulted in Saddam's invasion of Kuwait.

6- It was not politically feasible to lift the sanctions with Saddam remaining in power. After all he committed the unforgivable sin of destabilizing our oil supply when he invaded Kuwait.

Could it be that the obscure ulterior motives had something to do with oil?

Newsflash #1: Political asylum seekers lie and embellish in order to get asylum. See Ayaan Hirsi Ali for example. Their choice is to lie or be denied asylum.

Newsflash #2: Political dissidents and exiles lie and exaggerate in order to enlist the help of powerful countries and sway political opinion in their favor. Tin-pot dictators only pose a threat to that segment within their civilian population that opposes them but you won't get anywhere telling the truth. Much better to portray them as an existential threat to the entire planet. As a bonus it makes you look like a great hero for opposing them.

Newsflash #3: UN inspectors were in Iraq following up on the leads provided by Curveball and company. Not a single lead panned out! You don't need to be an intelligence officer with years of training to figure out that you're dealing with an unreliable source or worse a plant or a double-agent (a plant or a double-agent would have provided some good info to protect their credibility). Even Dubya should have figured that one out. Of course he and his administration didn't want to know the truth because it would have deprived them of their casus belli. The American media and the American public can't see the forest for the trees. They are so involved in the minutiae of how knew what when and who fed what dis-information to whom that they forget this simple and obvious fact.