It was a startling (considering how infrequently we get them from the Bushies)
admission today, with Colin Powell acknowledging that
...in all candor, that we underestimated the level of damage that had occurred to the infrastructure as a result of the period of sanctions, but more importantly as a result of the manner in which he ran that country in such a brutal, dictatorial way for almost 30 years...
This is a stunning concession for an administration that has been so cocksure of itself, and really forces us to pose the following question:
If the White House had such poor intel on the condition of easily-observed Iraqi infrastructure (roads, electrical grid, water supply, etc.), how can we accept their continuing claim to have had good intel on the covert WMD programs Saddam allegedly ran? If our on-the-ground people couldn't even tell that the public infrastructure was for shit, how can we accept their word that they had the goods on the WMD programs that were operating under deep cover? It staggers the mind.