I'm so glad to have been one of the 32% who opposed invading Iraq from the start. Like an impulsive, sophomoric teen who lacks any level of foresight, GWB and his administration now have only themselves to blame for the mess they have made. (Too bad about all those dead Iraqi civilians and US soldiers, not to mention the entire generation of disabled young American Veteran's that has been created.)

My opinion, held from the first whiff of aggression, was that Sunnis plus Shiites plus Kurds equals civil war but that eventuality was achieved with the accelerative assistance of the administration's incompetetence.

Public opinion regarding the preemptive invasion of Iraq went through a number of interesting ups and downs (see the wikipedia's article on public opinion on Iraq). In January of 2003, most people were inclined to let the inspections work. Then came the State of the Union speech, the infamous Powell presentation to the UN, and numerous performances by Dick Cheney and Condi Rice.

The support for invading Iraq was never solid. There was a significant percentage of people who did not think preemptive invasion wise or moral and who saw no connection between Iraq and the Sept. 11 attacks. Other people -- including far too many media people -- decided that if the government was saying there was a reason to attack, well, they would trust their government. That was a mistake. And almost immediately, the excuses for making that mistake were exposed as over-inflated or outright lies.

I think it's foolish for the Inquirer or anyone else to continue to tout the toppling of Hussein as some kind of justification for the invasion of Iraq -- as though his capture makes the terrible violent chaos the country has descended into somehow worthwhile and our own loss of moral ground more bearable.

Stumpy,

Incompetetence isn't the problem...it's stupid policies and the Modern Republican Partys cult mentality:

"[Kevin Phillips, a political strategist for the Republican Party]...he long ago abandoned his enthusiasm for the Republican coalition he helped to build. His latest book (his 13th) looks broadly and historically at the political world the conservative coalition has painstakingly constructed over the last several decades. No longer does he see Republican government as a source of stability and order. Instead, he presents a nightmarish vision of ideological extremism, catastrophic fiscal irresponsibility, rampant greed and dangerous shortsightedness. (His final chapter is entitled "The Erring Republican Majority.") In an era of best-selling jeremiads on both sides of the political divide, "American Theocracy" may be the most alarming analysis of where we are and where we may be going to have appeared in many years...

...Although Phillips is scathingly critical of what he considers the dangerous policies of the Bush administration...he identifies three broad and related trends — none of them new to the Bush years but all of them, he believes, exacerbated by this administration's policies — that together threaten the future of the United States and the world.

[1] is the role of oil in defining and, as Phillips sees it, distorting American foreign and domestic policy.

[2]...is the ominous intrusion of radical Christianity into politics and government.

[3]...is the astonishing levels of debt — current and prospective — that both the government and the American people have been heedlessly accumulating.

If there is a single, if implicit, theme running through the three linked essays that form this book, it is the failure of leaders to look beyond their own and the country's immediate ambitions and desires so as to plan prudently for a darkening future."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/19/books
/review/19brink.html?ex=1300424400&en=b41804555
786248d&ei=5090
&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

"A March 2003 poll from the Program on International Policy Studies showed 66 percent of Americans favored invading Iraq; 32 percent opposed it. No close call there."

No close call because of the LIES that the administration is addicted to, and the easy rollover of the corporate press in spreading those lies and refusing to cover the protest.

NAME ONE ASPECT OF AMERICA THAT BUSH HASN'T DESTROYED OR DAMAGED.

He's a very efficient traitor. And the press can't wait to suck his toes on Iran.

Sorry but the poll info is not correct as stated...In the months up to the invasion the 60+% supporting war did so on the condition that it was in concert with the UN. No polls except maybe in the White House had two thirds supporting a US initiated invasion absent the UN.

At my age I suppose I should just quit expecting people to learn any faster than they do. But Billmon was writing in the summer and fall of 2003 about the truth that using military power uses it up, unless the desired results can be achieved very quickly.

Anyone with their eyes open could see by September 2003 that things would only grind on at the same dismal level or get worse as time went on, unless there was a complete and immediate transformation of U.S. policy (supporting real, locally based elections; renouncing bases; turning reconstruction over to Iraqis themselves; bringing in international support). By spring 2004, it had become impossible to do those things even had this administration wanted to. After Bush's reelection, it was just a matter of time before the civil war escalated into an open conflict. Now we're almost there.

Hope all those Blackhawks we showed off in 'Operation Swarmer' are being kept handy and in good repair...

Oh how we long for the return of Pollacracy. When we can all be ruled by a President who doesn't lead by what he believes but by one who reads the daily polls and adjusts his policies accordingly.