Well, who’s the simpleton now? Those who dreamed of spreading democracy to the Arabs or those who denied that it could ever happen?

Fifteen hundred Americans, who volunteered to defend their country, are dead in Iraq. This is in addition to however many American and other coalition civilians, and coalition troops, have also been killed - a thousand more, perhaps. Now add in the Iraqi civilians killed - estimated, with almost complete uncertainty, to be in the range of 100,000. And now consider the maimed. And the cost of this is in the range of $200 billion. All these numbers are increasing daily.

Terrorism in the region has unquestionably increased. This doesn’t require defining anyone attacking our troops or civilians or Iraqi allies as a “terrorist” - if killing 125+ people at prayer is not terrorism, then the word has no meaning. Iraq isn’t a democracy, nor is Iraqi democracy inevitable - it is unstable, violent, with sharp ethnic/religious divisions. Some parts are better than other parts, some parts are much, much worse. And some parts are rubble.

Saddam had no WMD, nor any WMD programs, nor any connection to international terrorism, over perhaps the last decade. On this score, as a result of the “framing of a guilty man” that our government engaged in, our credibility around the world has been devastated. In Abu Ghraib, our reputation for respecting human rights has been devastated. By virtue of the bloodshed we have unleashed in Iraq (and by virtue of the tall tales which grow up around it), our reputation for peace and forbearance has been demolished. And by virtue of the fact that we have not honestly come to grips with any of this, have taken no action to correct our mistakes, our devastated credibility has been devastated some more.

And Saddam is gone. And Hosni said there’d be elections, some day. Sweet.