I'm going to have to agree in large part with what Frankly, my dear... said about the mistakes. The fact that we will never know what would have happened if the plan for Phase IV of the war had been more than 42 powerpoint slides by Douglas Feith is a fact. I have to balance it with all the other things we will never know, but it is entirely possible that if those mistakes had not been made, the military would have succeeded in toppling Hussein, establishing peace and order, and withdrawing.

Given that that outcome is one that I had, along with millions of others, said could not possibly happen, that means that it is quite possible I was wrong, and that what we have today was not inevitable. It happened either because of incompetence, or because that outcome was not the goal, as many have suggested here and elsewhere. And that does not change just because we will never know what would have happened if they had listened to us and not started the war either.

Why bring this up? Because what Fred Hiatt is doing is playing politics. He doesn't care if what he said yesterday doesn't agree with what he says today, he only cares if what he says today will have the effect it needs to have today to further his interests, and the interests of those he serves.

The only counter to that is to do as Glenn has done, and play history. Being correct in history is what exposes a statement made for political opportunity from a statement of fact. So people who oppose the Fred Hiatts of the world need to be speaking history, and they need to be speaking fact. And fact and history says that what Frankly my dear... says is true, even if it means that people who oppose Bush have been wrong before. Isn't that our big advantage anyway, that we can admit mistakes?

Now for an example from today's NYT: It turns out that there are/were moves afoot to close Guantanamo Bay. Those advocating it seem to believe that doing so will eliminate the stain it is creating. Totally ahistorical. Stains are be eliminated when the wrongs that caused them are redressed, not when we simply stop committing them.

As I have mentioned before, withdrawing from Iraq is not a complete plan for an occupying power that has obligations under international humanitarian law. I do hope that the plan for what to do in addition to the withdrawal isn't just "Let them eat cake with their ethnic cleansing", and is better than 42 powerpoint slides.

Probably I will get pasted for saying all this.

But the responsibility for what some (me, for instance) would characterize as criminal behavior by the leaders of a democracy is shared by all of the people. We can redress some of it by prosecuting those leaders, but ultimately it is our stain for not stopping them.

Dan Froomkin is quoting acting assistant attorney general Richard A Hertling about the denial of security clearances to OPR investigators looking into the wiretapping issue. Recall there was speculation that Gonzales knew he was target of an investigation and so advised nixing the clearances. The response seems to be worse, that Bush overrulled Gonzales to nix them. Doesn't that mean President George W. Bush obstructed justice? Or is this a case of the principle that "the President did it, that makes it legal"?

"Within the Department of Justice, OPR [the Office of Professional Responsibility] sought assistance in obtaining security clearances to the Terrorist Surveillance Program to conduct its investigation. This request reached the Attorney General. The Attorney General was not told that he was a subject or target of the OPR investigation, nor did he believe himself to be. The Attorney General did not ask the President to shut down or otherwise impede the OPR investigation. The Attorney General recommended to the President that OPR be granted security clearances to the Terrorist Surveillance Program. The President made the decision not to grant the requested security clearances."

For anyone familiar with how science works, this is a truly remarkable state of affairs. It is extremely rare to find such a complete state of unanimity over such a prolonged period of time.

Not really. that state of affairs marks a state of known science as opposed to a controversial issue. What it means is the global warming is not a controversial issue, and hasn't been for some time. In particular, it means that we are not waiting until all the facts to come in. We have them.