Every few years something happens in the world that causes those leftists that still have functioning brains to reexamine their premises.

The Stalin revelations of 1956, the Berlin Wall, the Cultural Revolution, the killing fields of Cambodia, the invasion of Czechoslovakia, the invasion of Afghanistan, and (to keep a long story short,) the unbroken record of human devastation and death the consistent application of their philosophy has inflicted on the planet -- all of these have caused a number of leftists over the decades to abandon the movement in disillusion and horror.

Unfortunately, that has resulted in a remainder immune to logic, facts, reality, and history. And a lot of them are calling the shots in the present-day leftist movements, but that's another story.

The Iraq crisis has been doing the same thing, causing reasonable liberals to come to conclusions other than those demanded by the mainstream Left. It should not go without notice that many of the articles and commentaries I have posted on this subject supporting my positions have been written by people who consider themselves liberals.