http://www.tomdispatch.com/Just imagine: You run a flagship national newspaper, the New York Times. It's the fifth anniversary of President Bush's catastrophic invasion of Iraq. Your own record of reportage in the period leading up to the invasion was not exactly sterling. So, for a change of pace, you decide to turn most of your double op-ed page in your Sunday "Week in Review" over to people who can look back thoughtfully on the misapprehensions of that moment.
But who? Now, that's a tough one. You want "nine experts on military and foreign affairs" who can consider "the one aspect of the war that most surprised them or that they wished they had considered in the prewar debate." Hmm, sounds like an interesting idea. Of course, one option would be to gather together an involved crew who, even before the invasion began, saw in one way or another that problems, possibly disaster, lay ahead. That would be a logical thought…
…But it wouldn't be the Times, which this past Sunday chose to ask a rogue's gallery of "experts" who led (or cheerled) us deep into the war and occupation what surprised them most. Leading off those pages were Richard Perle, nicknamed "the Prince of Darkness," L. Paul Bremer III, the former American viceroy of Baghdad, who so brilliantly disbanded the Iraqi Army and much of the country as well, not to speak of invasion and occupation cheerleaders Frederick Kagan, Danielle Pletka, and Kenneth M. Pollack. With the exception of Pollack, all of them unsurprisingly pointed the finger elsewhere or claimed they were really on the mark all along.
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