Was the War in Iraq Inevitable?

I went to this lecture by Charles Duefler at the World Affairs Council in downtown SF tonight.  He was in town to promote his new book "Hide and Seek" about the search for WMD's in Iraq.   He spoke for about 30 minutes about serving as the leader of the CIA's Iraq Survey group and the 2004 report (referred to as the "Duefler Report") that resulted from their work in Iraq.  He made several intriguing points and comments during his lecture, but the best part was definitely when he took audience questions via a moderator.  I thought these comments were the most interesting:

- the Iraqis considered the driving down of their oil prices by the UAE to be "war," even though they weren't killing people, they severely hurt national pride

- if Bush had just stuck to the initial plan of removing Saddam and his top lieutenants instead of declaring war on every Iraqi with a gun, we might not be in the mess we are in now (lesson for North Korean and Iran)

- no intellegiance analyst would have predicted that we would stop Iraq from going into Kuwait in 1991, but we wanted to play nice with the UN and our new Russian friends

- the Iraqis didn't see the Monica Lewinsky scandal as a big deal

- the biggest mistake by Bush was to not listen to the intelligence community about the internal dynamics of Iraq (lesson for North Korea and Iran)

- he thought there were WMDs in Iraq, just not to the extent the Bushies wanted us to believe

- the US did a good job of protecting the Iraqis involved in the Iraqi oil industry (of course)

- analysts in DC relied mostly on computers for their information on Iraq

- coercive disarmamant and arms control are not the same thing, CD is forced upon the country

- interrogation of high-value targets was poorly managed (e.g. all of the prisoners were allowed to commiserate in the prison yard and coordinate what they would be telling investigators, high turnover of investigators)

- Saddam was crafty and scary person to be around

- not all WMDs are created equal  

- we should establish embassys in all countries in order to gain an thorough understanding of each country's internal dynamics (lessons for North Korea and Iran)

- the Iraqi people considered Americans to be super smart, well informed, and organized (even though we proved not to be)

- 3 things US can do well: throw $$ at problems, build bureacracies, and blow things up.

The audio and video of his presentation should be available on the WAC website soon.