I had decided in our first gulf war, that it would be a disaster to proceed to Baghdad and that came from learning about that part of the world in my assignment at U.S. Central Command. That was preceded by realizing in the midst of the Vietnam War that we had invaded a country that was not a domino and were facing a dedicated adversary that was determined to pay any human cost to defend their political goal.

As Nixon took over, I started to see Tricky Dickey’s style of integrity start to infuse itself into our military. I then watched how an Army general named Colin Powell could rise through the ranks solely through politics and because of our military’s successful efforts to greatly reduce racism and then show his true colors when he discriminated against gays by supporting “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” The fact that he was at the U.N. WMD show told me the facts were going to be based on politics not facts. Like you Ondelette, I paid a lot of attention to what inspectors were finding in Iraq and how utterly stupid it would be for Saddam to risk having a realistic WMD program. Saddam was a horrific monster, but not stupid. I believed that international pressure and inspections would hold him at bay and that military force had to be the absolute last option.

The major reason I saw this tragedy coming was because I knew what most of those serious experts either didn’t know or want to recognize, that the political morass in Iraq and the overriding tribal thinkers still wielding power, plus the religious history and neighboring players, especially Iran, would swallow any military invasion as happened in Vietnam. I knew that the oppressed Shiites would have only one goal and that was sectarian rule and not a secular nation. I also was fairly certain that our military was not adequately prepared for insurgency warfare.

I have no credentials as a foreign policy expert and do not consider myself an expert on the Middle East. I was really looking more at the soul of G.W. Bush and his puppet masters Cheney and Rove and in my heart knew that anything they supported had to be wrong and inhumane. I was naive in one way, until I saw that an invasion was actually going to happen, I wanted to believe that the international community, my Democrats in congress, the MSM and saner heads would prevail and prevent the invasion. Thanks to all that I have learned since entering GG’s and your world, I am now much less naïve and much better informed, especially about the MSM.

...says it.

Thanks, Glenn, for (again) going beneath the surface of the superficial MSM coverage of the candidates' positions and expecially their disagreements. The importance of "experience" is to reassure "the serious" that they can ignore anyone who steps outside the bounds of their framing of the issues. Hence, eternal "war."

Begs lots of interesting questions, e.g. does Hillary have too much "experience." Next book?

...but I asked my father why we didn't go on to Baghdad in 1991. He explained the problem in terms of the Balkans and WWI. I got it - and on that basis alone I knew Bush's war was a disaster before it ever started.

It didn't take a wonk or a genius. Just a little historical and cultural perspective. Just a little.

One would have had to try very hard not to trip over some kind of understanding that invading & occupying Iraq would be pure Folly.

All I had to do was actually parse the statements being made to justify the invasion and I could tell they were lies from the word choices alone. It isn't difficult.

Not difficult for those with open minds who continually thirst to learn more. Very difficult for those with closed minds who are insecure and swallow that insecurity by maintaining they are right regardless of the facts or consequences.

One would have had to try very hard not to trip over some kind of understanding that invading & occupying Iraq would be pure Folly.

And trying that hard requires motivation. Maybe in addition to a rotting culture of experts, we need to look at exactly how that motivation arises. Is it fear? Fear of what? Of losing a job, deadending a career, being wrong in public? Is it more insidious? Threats of some kind, fear of accusations or persecution or arrest or something? Is it adulation? Do these people believe so fervently in something? Is it secrecy? Did they all think they were privy to information that made the obvious wrong and the unlikely probable, that converted the uninitiated into the uneducated? What could possibly cause an entire community of experts (well at least some of them experts) to do the wrong thing in concert, when the right thing was being voiced by so many outsiders with so little sophistication?

I do know that some were promoting the idea that these people knew so much it had made them timid, and so less informed people needed to step in and act. Were they afraid of being called timid? Do angels rush in when fools call them timid?

The shabbiness of the evidence and the unanimity of media approval for Powell's UN sales pitch had a profound effect on me. I wasn't exactly a Pollyanna before, but that day made it official that our nation had had a psychotic break from reality.

I've documented this at some length at http://dayofshame.blogspot.com.

Re: the "lucky guesses" of some, I quote from a post there, listing the five questions I repeatedly asked a Republican friend in the run-up to the war, all of which he repeatedly dodged:

1. In your opinion, what good evidence did Bush or Powell provide that Saddam has WMD?

2. How can one justify a pre-emptive war absent strong evidence of either a clear and present threat or a violation of UN sanctions?

3. If evidence doesn't matter, why did we urge the UN to resume the inspection regimes?

4. What justified our trumping the UN's inspection efforts (which, again, were resumed at our urging), at a substantial cost to us in international good will?

5. Why are we optimistic that regime change will be effective, given the tragic history of blowback and no U.S. good deed going unpunished in the Middle East?

It's just grand when they tell you "hindsight is 20/20." Sometimes sight is to, if you'll just open your eyes. Even if you aren't a fancy-schmancy "scholar."