>>>But it doesn't take away from the fact the this was perhaps the biggest intelligence mistake in history.
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>>How about Stalin not believing Richard Sorge's reports from Tokyo about Hitler's plan to invade USSR? He kept believing that the Molotov-Ribentrop (sp?) treaty was set in stone.
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>Nah. Every western nation, and Russia, believed Iraq has WMDs, not just one person. But it looks like Saddam was just playing a game, a deadly game that he couldn't win.

How do you measure a mistake? I'd do that by consequences. Had Stalin trusted his own spies, he'd start preparing to defend from Drang nach Osten in advance, and Hitler surely wouldn't have advanced so close to Moscow... and then possibly wouldn't lose the Napoleon gambit (get trapped in Russian winter). Either way, the history would have looked much much different, and we're talking of body count going up or down a million or more.

So far, in Iraq, it's still limited to one country. But then you may be right in the end. We still don't see how far will the consequences of this one go.