it's pretty hard to blame a country for 9/11 when we know they didn't do it for or in the name of a country.

While Afghanistan was argualbly justified, Iraq was a total, complete, mind-boggling mistake. We killed thousands of people who hadn't attacked us, and there's no way to set that right.

If we invaded because of WMD, then the incompetance of the American intelligence community is overwhelming. Sure, other countries backed the assessments, but we're the ones who acted on it. We needed to know...we needed the "smoking gun" that the admin was never able to produce.

If we invaded so as to fight terrorists in Baghdad instead of New York, well then exactly what kind of people are we? Have we dumped terrorism into the laps of innocent people who had in no way wronged us? Have we visited horror onto the Iraqis simply because we could, rather than because they were the root of the horror itself?

Did we invade to free the Iraqi people from tyranny? Personally, I can't buy that. I think only a very, very small number of Americans actually give a whit about Iraqi well-being.

Did we want to install democracy in the Arab world? Well they why in God's name was the planning for the post-war period so completely hair-brained? If we were serious about putting democracy in place, the post-war scenario would have been more important than the fighting itself, and clearly it wasn't.

Oil? Well, frankly it's as convincing as any other reason. Unfortunately it would also paint America in rather inhuman colors.

So Raoul's right. Either America screwed up in monumental terms, or the invasion is part of a very dark vision. Which is worse?