I thought he was an idiot, a fool, and I'm sure I said so. Turns out I should have been looking in a mirror while using those terms.

Blix and his team were right about Iraqi WMD and were being upfront and honest with the world about their findings. At the time, I for one simply wasn't interested in what they had to say unless it reinforced my preconceptions. The only rather meager and bitterly cold comfort I can now draw is that I wasn't alone. Pity.

The US was wrong, and not merely in detail. We were utterly, completely wrong. The UN, with people on the ground in Iraq at no smal peril to themselves, was trying to do the world a great service. They weren't Saddam's lapdogs (think I used that one too)...far from it, they were professional and competant, and we should have had the foresight and fortitude to listen to them. But they had one insurmountable strike against them: they weren't saying what we wanted to hear. Therefore, they and their findings were dismissed.

We should be drawing a number of lesson from this, but before that can happen we have to admit that we were wrong. Unfortunately, that appears to be a tough one. Having been unable to find the WMD we were so sure existed, it turns out now that the war wasn't really about them in the first place. Seems altering reality is easier than facing it.