War's supporters see dream turn into nightmare

To the editor:

Trivializing the controversy over the Niger forgeries to "just 16 words" in the State of the Union address ignores the fact that, to anyone paying serious attention, almost the entire case for war has long been known to be a load of manure. The Niger documents, for example, were exposed as forgeries months ago.

That this issue should crop up as a controversy now probably serves to mask a serious crisis among ruling circles in the United States and Britain over another intelligence failure: namely the notion sold to them by their paid Iraqi sycophants, like Ahmed Chalabi, that this was going to be a "cakewalk" with merry Iraqis throwing rose petals and sweets at the conquering heroes.

Iraq was low-hanging fruit. They could practically taste the oil. Now their beautiful dream is turning into a messy, chaotic nightmare. How could it have all gone so wrong?

MARCUS R. BOND

Cape Girardeau