How and Why We Went to War in Iraq

Here's how we went to war in Iraq, according to the various information, which is now becoming public.

The weapons of mass destruction argument was the one CIA Director George Tenet (search) told the president was rock solid — a "slam dunk," as quoted by journalist Bob Woodward (search) in his new book.

But if you take a look at the last chapter of my book and Wednesday's New York Times story about the operations of Assistant Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith (search)... you see that the president, vice president and secretary of defense appear to have been very moved by information gleaned from CIA files by Feith's office.

This was information appeared in no CIA reports, because its analysts and counterterrorism establishment did not believe it and would not pass it on to decison-makers.

This was the information that Iraq and Al Qaeda had been hooked up for at least a decade, and that Usama bin Laden (search) was Saddam Hussein's favorite partner in terror.

The CIA didn't believe that information, even though a special unit of the Pentagon thought the information was good and the CIA was wrong.

So the CIA said, "Don't use that stuff to justify the war. We'll give you a 'slam dunk' reason... weapons of mass destruction."

Well... we know how that turned out. The CIA was wrong.

Now the question is... was the CIA wrong when it said the connections between Iraq and Al Qaeda were bogus or irrelevant?

That's My Word.

What do you think? We'd like to hear from you, so send us your comments at myword@foxnews.com. Some of your e-mails will be featured on the air or on our site.

• Looking for previous My Word columns?
  Click here!