George,

A hallmark of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (with Pakistan as an adjunct) has been the reliance on the part of our government and military on faulty and unreliable intelligence.

Regarding Iraq, a demented individual code named "Curveball" gave totally fictional information acted upon as gospel by the Bush Administration and, in turn, our military--we followed the propaganda and garbage from a deceitful individual named Chalabi and acted upon his "information" to escalate the necessity for war with Iraq.

After repeated water boarding and various, sundry other "enhanced" techniques, a seriously mentally ill "terrorist" told his tormentors what they wished to know, though, in retrospect much of it contradictory and "subject to change." We acted on this fiction as well.

Now, in Afghanistan, we are using "Preditor" drones to launch "Hellfire" missiles from controls a half world distant acting on "intelligence" from sources many consider dubious, at best.

Tragically, the results of these missile attacks have been to kill more innocents than the ostensible Taliban or Al Qaeda individual(s).

These drone attacks are the stuff of Kafka, to the innocents injured or killed as a result, this becomes their "9-11," only we are the supposed "saviors" as opposed to "crazy terrorist oppressors."

Think, if you can imagine, a deadly missile fired from an unmanned aircraft controlled from a CIA operative thousands of miles away. Orwell couldn't invent anything more bizarre!

Incidentally,these "Preditor" drones cost us 4.5 MILLION a copy,,and 315 MILLION's worth have crashed in Afghanistan!

And we are closing schools because of budget retraints!

Harry Tenney (Electronic mail, April 23, 2010)