Summary: In a contentious interview with Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC’s “The Last Word,” former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice persists with the Bush administration’s debunked pretext for the Iraq war, that Saddam Hussein posed a threat to U.S. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on May 10, 2010, Aubrey Immelman reported that a cascade of bombings and shootings hit at least 10 cities and towns in Iraq, killing at least 100 people — mostly in Shiite areas — in Iraq’s deadliest day thus far in 2010.

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Summary: Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, an Iraqi defector who fled Iraq in 1995 and went by the codename “Curveball,” has publicly admitted for the first time that he made up stories about mobile bioweapons trucks and secret factories to try to bring down Saddam Hussein’s regime. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on February 15, 2010, Aubrey Immelman reported that the incendiary rhetoric of demagogues like Glenn Beck or Michele Bachmann is powerful because it slips through the cracks in our acculturated human rationality, with its biological substrates in the fontal cortex, to hit a lower nerve in the subcortical brain regions of the limbic system, the seat of emotion.

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Summary: An unrepentant Tony Blair defended his decision to join the United States in attacking Iraq, invoking the discredited neocon argument before a panel investigating the war that the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks made the threat of weapons of mass destruction impossible to ignore. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on January 29, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that suicide rates among active-duty U.S. military personnel continuing to rise even as the Defense Department dedicated more resources to identifying troubled service members and getting them the help they need. Preliminary figures confirmed at least 125 soldiers killed themselves in 2008, compared with 115 in 2007, 102 in 2006 and 87 in 2005.

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Summary: The Bush administration was “hell bent” on the 2003 military invasion of Iraq and actively undermined efforts by Britain to win international authorization for the war, Jeremy Greenstock, British ambassador to the United Nations from 1998 to 2003, testified before an inquiry into the Iraq war. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on November 27, 2008, Aubrey Immelman reported that a suicide car bomber targeting an American convoy exploded about 200 yards outside the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, killing at least four Afghan bystanders, while in Iraq, the country’s parliament approved a security pact with the United States that allowed American troops to stay in the country for three more years.

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Summary: Thomas Fingar, Bush administration deputy director of national intelligence for analysis, suggests the Iraq war was as much the failure of policymakers as the product of the flawed intelligence on which they relied. … Decision-making on Iraq was marred by a strong sense of time pressure, a tendency among decision makers to seek concurrence on Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, and a directive leadership style in the White House — all of which are causes of groupthink. … According to the Gayle Report, the Department of Defense knew before the Iraq war started in 2003 of the threats of mines and roadside bombs in Iraq but did nothing to acquire Mine Resistant Ambush-Protected (MRAP) vehicles ahead of the invasion — a level of overconfidence symptomatic of groupthink.

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