The Iraq invasion for Gulf War 2 took place on March 20, 2003. Prior to that time, the White House was actively involved in making preparations for the invasion, arguing over inspections, and otherwise making a fuss about alleged weapons of mass destruction.

On May 1, 2003, the "Mission Accomplished" speech took place on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (which, by the way, was outside San Diego, not anywhere near Iraq at the time). Subsequent to that speech, the White House was heavily involved in managing the post-invasion efforts in Iraq.

Also, during 2003, SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) was a big scare, killing 774 people before the World Health Organization declared it contained. On June 14, Robert Novak published the name of Valerie Plame, under cover for the CIA, and the whole CIA leak scandal began. On December 12, Saddam Hussein was captured in Tikrit and got a free dental exam. And, perhaps saddest of all, Buffy the Vampire Slayer aired its last show.

Before we close out this article, consider the following thoughts:

• Despite the cries of loyalists on the Microsoft side, Lotus Notes and Domino (Notes is the client, Domino the server) together make for an excellent email system, designed for security and reliability at the enterprise level.

• Email is absolutely essential for an organization like the White House to connect and collaborate.

• An email migration, even one that's as smooth as humanly possible, is going to cause communications interruptions for a few months, at minimum.

To say that the White House was busy during 2002 and 2003 is, of course, a massive understatement.

Question: So, why, in the middle of a war, why did the White House decide to change its email systems?

Question: Isn't interrupting such a strategic communications system as email, in the middle of a war, the height of irresponsibility?

Question: How could this have happened?

Question: What strategic mistakes were made because there wasn't reliable email communications at the White House and in the Executive Office of the President before deciding to invade Iraq?

No matter whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, you know that lack of communication breeds mistakes, misunderstandings, and crossed signals. Email migrations don't happen by themselves. Someone had to authorize and decide to go forward with the migration, which, effectively, would have crippled email communication during that time.

So, here are the big, freaky questions of the day:

Question: Could a crippled email system have led to some of the strategic mistakes in Iraq?

Question: If doing this migration at this time wasn't irresponsibility, what was it?

Question: Could there have been any benefit to the administration for migrating right in the middle of the prewar buildup?

Now, before some of you jump down my throat and say I'm writing this because I'm on one side or other, support one party or another, know that I had no idea I'd come up with these questions before I started this investigation.

It's that last question that's had me thinking, especially as Congress is trying to get documents from the White House as part of their various investigations. If I were in the White House (which is where I really should be), is there any reason I would have wanted to cripple email at a critical time? Is there any reason I would want to be able to say email was crippled?

Well, maybe Senator Leahy was right. Maybe it's so they could claim the dog ate their homework. Maybe they wanted to create a foundation for later plausible deniability. Or maybe they just really, really don't understand email technology.

At least, those are some possibilities. I don't like the answers either way. I don't like the idea that it might have been a case of incredible irresponsibility. I also don't like the idea that this email failure was planned. But it's just not possible that losing those email messages was a simple accident. To be an accident, it would have needed an amazing array of rather impossible coincidences, especially given the intrinsic replication capabilities of Notes.

That's just the technical reality.

Contributing Editor Tom Lowery is President of Portage Associates, Inc., a Notes and Domino consulting firm. He holds principal-level certifications in application development and system administration. His hobbies include chasing after his two year old son Duncan and flying. Tom can be reached at tom@lowery.net.