If we follow that logic, then we should have attacked N Korea first, they have always posed a greater danger, and we should certainly have moved from Iraq directly into Iran. In the long run, they will prove to be the greatest danger of all.

As for the usual excuse that Saddam was a first-class SOB who was better off dead and both his people and the rest of the world are better off without him, that is perfectly true, but you could have said the same about a dozen other tinhorn dictators and bullies from all over the world. We didn't go after Saddam because he was evil, we went after him because he was easy, because he was in the center of the Middle East, and because he had oil. We went after him because we thought we could get away with it.

No, TB, your continued excuses and apologies for the Iraq invasion stem solely from your inability to face what a colossal blunder it was and to cover up the magnitude of the consequences we will continue to suffer for that error for decades to come. And there is more to it than that, an ideological and psychological consideration which must be faced before we can ever learn from this tragedy.

Everyone makes mistakes, that is not the issue here. We face them, admit them, and we do our best to make sure they don't happen again. But this mistake is tied in with your entire world view, your philosophy and your ideology. You cannot see it as a strategic error, perhaps even an unavoidable one anyone might have made in a moment of stupidity or weakness. You insist on seeing it as a logical necessity and an inevitability of how you imagine history unfolding. It is a validation and justification for a political ideology and to abandon it now might be perceived as a rejection of that philosophy. You are condemned to continue repeating the error again and again.

It was the Democrats who first made this blunder, in Viet Nam. It may have been an honest mistake then, but they learned their lesson. The Republicans never did, and they couldn't wait to fight their Vietnam and win it, to their everlasting glory. This time they even picked a geography better suited to American tactics and technology. But it didn't work out the way they planned. Even that might be forgiven if it was seen for what it was: a mistake. But no, as long as that is not understood, as long as we continue to make excuses and ignore the obvious, we will continue to repeat that mistake over and over.

As for N Korea and Iran, did it ever occurr to you that one of the reasons they are not responding now to American threats and bluster is because they know perfectly well our disaster in Iraq makes us less confident, AND LESS CAPABLE, of any further military adventures? And that part of our military weakness today is the result of how we have squandered our moral authority in the world by demonstrating that we are perfectly capable of initiating agression for purely economic and strategic gains, for geopolitical and even ideological reasons? Yeah TB, we "won" in Iraq, but the world sure doesn't look very stable and peaceful to me.