Excerpt from an upcoming novel

The novel itself is not showing on the B&N website, so if the link above came through, it's to an abridged CD. And, since this is from the galley, the finished text may be different:

How do you think Iraq got started? Four or five neocon theorists, totally committed to the cause, taking a few discredited reports from a handful of paid informants, completely unreliable, plus one forged memo on yellowcake uranium and a satellite photo of a mobile chemical lab that turned out to be making insecticide instead of anthrax. Pretty thin stuff, huh? But the next thing you know, 135,000 troops are slogging through the desert toward Baghdad.

And the thoughts of the main character to that?

...wondering if he really believed it. It seemed unlikely. But a few years ago, the idea of a war with Iraq would have seemed just as outlandish, and now half the globe was seemingly on alert, waiting nervously to see where the American hammer would fall next. [emphasis mine]

The American hammer? You mean the one with overextended troops who can't control the two countries in which they are currently battling?