I probably shouldn't reply to potential flame posts but I will, in the hope that you, shooter, are looking for dialogue rather than score points.

Afghanistan absolutely had something to do with 9/11, so watch your facts there. The Taliban enabled Al-Qaeda - providing them protection, money, and material support - in ways that few other nations can compare. This should be obvious to anyone engaged in lessons from our foreign policy of the last ten and the last fifty years by now.

As to your Sweden question, you'll see from below I'm not a big fan of categoricals. Different countries, different communities even require different responses. Because the first and foremost measure of a successful foreign policy (and I'm including military intervention in that arena) should be successful implementation. Something failed to consider on every level in Iraq.

Alright, s, I appreciate the opportunity to respond.

"The point I'm making is that by your own criteria - providing them protection, money, and material support - Israel could invade and overthrow the Lebanese government for harboring Hezbollah and retake the contested territories for continued harboring of Palestinian attackers."

Outlining how Afghanistan provided protection, money, and material support to Al-Qaeda was only an explanation of only one of the differences between Afghanistan and Iraq, which honestly should be abundantly clear by now. However, the support the Taliban gave to the very terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 - on a federal government level - is only *a criterion* for making foreign policy decisions, not *the criteria*. As noted in the rest of my post, the first and foremost criterion for any foreign policy initiative should be likelihood of success.

As for Lebanon, a country that I have spent a significant amount of time in over the past year, you simply could not be more wrong about the role of their federal government, and these differences are essential to our foreign policy approach. The federal government of Lebanon is institutionally opposed to Hezbollah and in no way "harbors" them. The same point could be made about Pakistan, and frankly could have been made about Iraq. Whatever one thinks of the Musharraf dictatorship (or Hussein's, for that matter), these governments have no interest in promoting the presence of terrorist groups in "their" country. They do not share goals, they do not share resources, and if these countries' governments were strong enough to get rid of the armed insurgent groups that clearly challenge their authority, they would. Unfortunately, they are too weak to do so and it is unlikely that any government that would replace them would be stronger.

Again, this is only one of many reasons it does not benefit our national security to see a change in government in Pakistan or Lebanon, and did not benefit our national security to see a change in government in Iraq, much less depose the sitting government by force. Outside of the numerous humanitarian concerns, which admittedly are "second-tier" in the foreign policy community, the war in Iraq failed that very basic test.

...a system I don't really care to. But that being said, I think it's important to recognize what the real problems are and not get distracted by the smoke and mirrors.

Glenn gets it right in the update:

"But what is extraordinary is Zelikow's deceitful pretense that he is a neutral Iraq commentator -- both while testifying before Congress and pontificating on our network news programs. That really is just outright fraud."

Here's the heart of the problem. It is fraudulent for Zelikow to comment in any public forum without disclosing this relationship. Some celebrity goes on the air as a drug company shill and there's at least a moderate outcry; this man is regularly commenting to the media without telling them he's bought and paid for about an issue of paramount importance to our national security (even Neil Bush got in trouble for being bought by the Chinese) and not even a whimper? At the very least, all "real" journalists should never talk to him again.

I think Ken Silverstein's article, on the other hand, is smoke and mirrors. It's entirely unclear what the outrage is, exactly: that foreign governments have access to lobbying firms? The lobbying firm tactics? That lobbying firms exist in the first place? These are all known facts - hardly any sort of "expose" - and whether Silverstein likes the outcome or not an lobbying is an essential part of our democracy. Perhaps if he had suggested some reasonable limits his article would have had some heft to it, but he didn't, and as such, the article comes off like a second-rate retread of a bad Borat sketch. I tend to think that "real" reporters such as Seymour Hersh or Dana Priest would be surprised to find that the Silverstein piece even qualifies as news, much less good journalism. That's what I mean by smoke and mirrors.

Zelikow is defrauding this country, and it's clear exactly how. Don't let serious outrage about that get muddled by one's own heavy-handed righteousness.