How could they believe Iraq was a "well-educated, secular nation"? This wasn't a closed society like Iran, it was a country we had extensive commercial, intelligence and military ties with, we armed them against the Iranians, we had businesses there, we sent Cheney over there to hobnob with Saddam, and we had already gone to war with them under Bush I. It's not like this was an unknown country to us. We knew exactly what we were getting into, Bush just refused to listen to all the advisors who told him things he didn't want to know and totally miscalculated what would happen.

I've already spelled out in detail Cheney's geopolitical reasons for invading. Mr Bush was not an evil man, and not as cynical as his VP, he may have really believed people seeing their country invaded woud greet us with open arms. He was wrong, and he should have guessed so. He was counseled by military and intelligence authorities and State Department pros what we were getting into, the White House just chose to ignore all those pointy-headed intellectuals. Bush was motivated by sincere but naive notions of "freedom and liberty" in a part of the world where those notions are alien, and perhaps even by his messianic and apocalyptic fundamentalist Christianity. He assumed the Iraqis would react the way he thought Americans would react under similar circumstances. He was wrong on both counts.

And of course, he ignored all the realities on the ground, of tribal conflicts, religious divisions, all the other factors that suddenly exploded once the dictatorship that kept these forces in check was removed. And immediately after the war, he dismantled the Iraqi army, police, security and state administration which led to immediate chaos.

To be honest, I would probably have done the latter myself, but I can be excused for my ignorance of Iraqi society. The President should have known better, he had access to intelligence resources that I didn't.

You're right, we were making good progress against Al-Quaeda. The CIA did a great job, mostly improvised on the fly, in Afghanistan and immediately routed Bin Ladin and the Taliban there with local help. I also give credit to the Bush team for the slow and meticulous but successful work they did in infiltrating Al-Quaeda communications and financial networks. This was important and virtuoso work, but by necessity, did not present the American public with the victory and revenge we demanded after 9/11. We wanted a Battle of Midway, and Iraq was going to be that. It turned into Operation Barbarossa instead. And even our successes in Afghanistan started unraveling due to DOD and CIA rivalry, and the withdrawal of assets there for the prep for Iraq. Invading Iraq had already been planned, Cheney admitted that, we had every intention of going there right from the start. We were going to plunge an oaken stake right into the heart of Islamofascism. We poked a hornet's nest, instead.

And when we found out how wrong he had been about WMDs, and when it looked like that had been cooked up just to justify agression for ecoomic and strategic purposes, he lost the support of the bulk of the American people. At least, that's when he lost me.

In the 60s, during my war, I got taken in by McNamara's Domino Theory and LBJ's Tonkin Gulf Incident, and here was a fight that was going to restore my faith in the honor of my country, its leaders and its arms. And I got taken again. Fool me once, shame on you.

Fool me twice, shame on me.

Yeah, I was gullible too.