READING MATTER

Late on a Friday afternoon is not the best time to bring this up. Everybody's probably gone or about to be gone for the weekend. But if you're still around and online you've got to read "The Vanishing Case for War" by Thomas Powers in the current issue of The New York Review of Books.

He begins, "The invasion and conquest of Iraq by the United States last spring was the result of what is probably the least ambiguous case of the misreading of secret intelligence information in American history." Then, with compelling details and riveting clarity, he addresses "whether it is even possible that a misreading so profound could yet be in some sense 'a mistake.'"

The conclusions Powers draws -- about a U.S. Congress that is nothing but an empty shell and a CIA that is nothing more than a pawn of the White House, let alone an arrogant, imperial presidency that undermines our security with lies -- are familiar enough. But Powers martials the evidence without polemics, and his argument is so convincing it ought to give us nightmares.