GregsOpinion.com

Perhaps not shocking that as many bigger media types reanalyze their Iraq position, bloggers should follow suit. So it is, I follow a link from Yellow Doggerel to see this round of "told ya so"

From Digby:

I realize how difficult it was to swim against that tide. It was exciting and difficult to resist, even for people like me. We were living history. But, at some point you had to step back and look at the magnitude of what we were contemplating --- particularly the huge step away from our post war consensus against wars of aggression --- and see that this thing was being rushed into production without adequate debate or planning. Saddam had been sitting there for a long, long time. There was no reason to believe that he couldn't have sat there for a few more months until we exhausted all other options. The fact that Bush and Cheney refused to do that should have been the deal breaker.

It's never easy to admit you were wrong. But, it is almost more important to realize why you were wrong than to admit it in the first place. If we could all wait to see how things turn out and then just say "whoops, sorry" and all would be well, then life would be pretty easy.

The fact is that the liberal hawks, especially, made the invasion palatable and acceptable to many people who trusted them. That is a heavy burden. I'm glad they've seen their error, but it doesn't mean we're on the same team, as Kevin seems to think. So far, I've seen little reason to believe they won't do exactly the same thing again if their blood gets up and they decide the opposition consists of people they don't wish to be associated with. I hope I'm wrong.

From Stephen Bates: ("self-serving" alert is warranted here, Steve)

Back before March 2003, I was one of those who tried to point out the consequences of preemptively invading Iraq. I was also among those protesting in public, largely ignored by the media. That some liberals were fooled by Bush's false assertions, and that the media was in bed, ah, embedded, with the military, made my task much more difficult. I am grateful that the American public is finally beginning to realize the disastrous mistake our alleged leadership has made... but frankly, I was hammered early on by otherwise reasonable people who thought the war was necessary, largely because they bought into the Bush administration's lies about the threats Iraq posed. Like Digby, I am disinclined to forgive quickly.

Karl-T at BurntOrange is wee bit more blatant in his sentiments:

Sometimes there is a little part of me that just wants to get up and say, "I told you so." It wouldn't be very grown-up or professional, but I'm 19 and a blogger so I'll say it.

I told you so, and so is Howard Dean.

Howard Dean sounded like he had been vindicated on Sunday when he noted that most Americans now agree that the United States should not have invaded Iraq. It was a position that fueled his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, and earned Dean much criticism in the process.

?After being castigated by both Democrats and Republicans for a while, now the majority of Americans agree with me this was a mistake,? the one-time Democratic front-runner said on CNN?s ?Late Edition.?

More than half, or 52 percent, of Americans said the war was not worth fighting, according to an ABC News-Washington Post poll taken June 17-20. That number is up from 50 percent in May.

Via Greg ....

Back that truck up here people. As one who may well fit into the realm of "liberal hawk" (lord knows I've received every other ideological designation over time), let's not claim a universality of guilt on this. The errors made in this war are those of George Bush and his administration. That they have not accomplished as much as they had hoped as easily as they had hoped to accomplish it, issues such as Iraqi oil paying for Iraqi reconstruction were never the basis of agreement by the wide majority of those of us Democrats who did support going into Iraq.

For my own part, I think its false to claim that others were "duped" to be quite blunt about it. Furthermore, its inherently disingenuous to claim that many of the significant "dupes" were the work of Bush's administration when much of that very intelligence was known by the Clinton adminstration, which - not ironically - had the very same CIA director. To claim Bush duped people on the basic claims of a need to go in is to claim a complete abbrogation of power on the part of Bill Clinton in regards to Iraq's threat. Do "liberal doves" wish to go that far?

Perhaps they do, but I'll leave it for them to answer. But mind you that you place yourselves to the left of Hillary freakin' Clinton on defense when you do this. I'm guessing that's a charge some might want to reconsider as the junior senator from New York stakes out a very fair-minded ground on defense and foreign affairs (to date).

Decisions aren't made in hindsight, however. They are made in real time. It is a false proposition to suggest that either defense policy be set purely by hindsight, or that we heretofore claim zero credibility to any claim eminating from a President. Therein lies the danger that Iraq Syndrome replaces Vietnam Syndrome in its ability to cut our own willingness to defend our own interests overseas. Also much of the reason I credit John Kerry with the adulation I do in a post earlier today in leiu of this dangerous mindset. This isn't merely pre-Clintonian ... its downright McGovernish to define a military policy as one that "just says no" except only to mere hypotheticals that have cleared hurdles set ever higher without justification.

Faults? There's plenty ... I've written in one form or another before, that in following Bush on this action, that I, and I suspect a few others, held our doubts in check because we knew that Hussein was both capable of making WMD, had an expressed desire to have them, and wanted us to believe them. If the man robbing you wishes you to believe he has a gun, you sure as hell don't ask for proof. But here's the thing ... we DID ask for proof, guys. But the standard of proof is different here. Instead of the onus being on us to prove Hussein DID NOT have WMD, it was up to Hussein to prove that those WMD documented on the record by inspectors be shown, or that records of their destruction be offered. Neither was the case. When you cry wolf too many times, don't be shocked if you eventually get eaten by one. I have no remorse over that. Never will.

My own reservations about Bush's case have been well stated (and even unwell stated) in the past. I stand by those as strongly as I do my basis for going in. At the end of the day, Bush's finale rationale (ever-shifting though it may be) is now that we are avenging Anfal ... a cry never really uttered in the debate during the leadup. Bush failed miserably in how he defined the need for this war and how he planned for the reconstruction. He has lost that credibility for whatever future wolf may yet plague him in fact.

There are sins of ommission and sins of commission. The sin of ommission would be to leave Hussein in power (something more clearly pushed for, it seems) hope that his bluster about weapons remained nothing more than bluster, and hope that nothing ever fell into the wrong hands so that American lives (or interests) were put at risk.

The sin of commission has been that poor planning on numerous fronts leads to more lives lost than are warranted by the rationale now offered by Bush. But the prior sin also risks lives ... those who didn't sign up to put theirs on the line, at that.

Like it or not, the proper debate was over commission ... not ommission vs commission.

I'm reminded of the TNR debate issue on Iraq and recall most poignantly the article by Kenneth Pollack, the most notable liberal dove of the bunch since he has an authorship staked in that realm. He spoke of a debate with former Clinton official (and PPI fellow) Bill Galston. As Pollack defined the debate, it was clear that Galston's case was the best, both in hindsight and in realtime. Galston's case was that he would support the war if it was Kenneth Pollack's war ... but that it would instead be George Bush's war. Given the amount of poor planning and stumbling argumentation coming from the administration, Bill Galston wasn't ready to go down that road. Not so much because Bill Galston foams at the mouth due to a case of Anti-Bushism ... but because he felt that this would be a case where the enemy of the good was not the perfect, but rather the "only." Bush was left to make the ONLY case for intervention. Howard Dean made a case for support in Iraq, believe it or not ... then he backed off it to join the Just Say No crowd. Memories can be such fleeting things in Presidential campaigns.

The point in that Galston-Pollack debate, however, is this ... motives count. I love Bill Galston's work to no end. But Bill Galston is a social science wonk, not a military historian, not a defense expert, nor is he a foreign policy wonk. Kenneth Pollack worked in the CIA, wrote a fair critique of the situation based on his work in the arena, and advanced a course of action. I don't place a great deal of faith in Bill Galston's foreign policy views because I don't have a sense of his work in that area to have that much trust. I do with Pollack. (want a better example, perhaps ... International ANSWER.) Likewise, when the doves come marching in, saying "Not In Our Name," that motive, too, gets processed. And all too often, it gets dismissed as it rightfully should. When you cede the playing field and don't bother defining a course of action by which defense is warranted (or even worse ... define it poorly), don't be surprised if you get ignored next time, too. Therein lies the danger of issue ownership.

You can say "I told you so" all you want ... but you didn't really tell us so.