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Is James Bond Responsible for the Iraq War?How the Middle East really got shaken and stirred.

By Richard Cohen
Posted Friday, Dec. 1, 2006, at 5:54 PM ET

(Continued from page 1)

It took the debacle in Iraq to make a mockery of Bond and all he represented. Maybe that's why the new Bond, played convincingly by Daniel Craig, is a more muted fellow. He's solid and tough, constructed of cue balls, but hardly invincible and by and large not having a very good time of it. This is a Bond of our times, one who could not come up with the WMD, appropriately humbled and working for an outfit that did no better than the CIA at assessing Saddam's arsenal or intentions. We now know Bond to be as dense as Felix Leighter, but so ingrained—still—is the impeccable image of British intelligence that it's hard to envision 007 standing before M and saying of WMD in Iraq that it is, sir, a "slam dunk."

I hope he winked.

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Richard Cohen is a columnist for the Washington Post.
Photograph of Sean Connery on Slate's home page from Wikipedia.
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