They attacked Iraq because it was weak, not because it posed an actual threat. They thought they could hide behind the military's skirts and project an aura of strength and resolve - a tidy little Falklands episode for the reelection campaign. They're not "staying the course" in Iraq out of fearlessness; they're just too chicken to acknowledge their error and try something different.

Admitting failure and defeat would set Republican idealism vis-a-vis military power back 30 years.

The stakes are really high at this point. Pulling back would mean conceding, essentially, that they had no path to victory in the first place. It would be admitting that they underestimated the will of the Iraqi people. And it would feed speculation about their motives and their competence (as if those weren't at issue right now).

I honestly believe that this administration thought... no, BELIEVED... that overthrowing Hussein would be the only precondition necessary to installing the sort of client state that they had envisioned. They were oversold by the in-exile Iraqi National Congress and by their surrogates advising the administration (see also: the American Enterprise Institute), and totally blew every rationale for going to war.

I don't know that they had "Falklands" in mind as a model, and certainly, we'd have ended the engagement in 2003 when Bush said "mission accomplished," all other things being equal. Problem is, beyond the mission to topple Hussein, there was nothing else planned. They were nation-building by fiat.

My opinion -- this is the inexplicable, fantastic hubris of the New American Century crowd coming home to roost; they know it, they just don't want to admit it. It's too bad that it's come at the expense of 2,500+ Americans KIA, 18,000+ Americans wounded, and at the expense of billions of dollars of [borrowed] treasure, and at the expense of our credibility throughout the known universe.

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"The iPod was not developed by Baptists in Waco." -- G.K.

What "illegal activities" are you referring to? The NSA programs to monitor international banking activities are not illegal.
(link...)

Indeed, on 9/24/01, there was an editorial in the NYT calling for just such a program.
(link...)

I clearly recall screams, yells and whining shortly after 9/11 demanding to know why everything possible was not done beforehand to prevent such an attack. The 9/11 Commission concluded that there was a massive failure by our intelligence agencies, mostly due to the various agencies not being able to share pertinent information. Jamie Gorelick herself authored the legislation making that so. Oh, but she served under Clinton, so her contribution to the failure can be overlooked.

Just like Project Echelon can be overlooked since it was Clinton's thing ...

My, my. Such hypocrisy. And ignorance. But I do understand that sufferers of BDS have a tendency for delusional thinking. Tis a pity, really ...