Words of wisdom

From Paul Krugman's column in the December 19 New York Times. The whole thing is worth reading but the last sentence of this excerpt alone is worth a dozen columns from a good number of other pundits I'm sure we could all name.

Now maybe, just maybe, Saddam's capture will start a virtuous circle in Iraq. Maybe the insurgency will evaporate; maybe the cost to America, in blood, dollars and national security, will start to decline.

But even if all that happens, we should be deeply disturbed by the history of this war. For its message seems to be that as long as you wave the flag convincingly enough, it doesn't matter whether you tell the truth.

Krugman also makes another point, that

[b]y now, we've become accustomed to the fact that the absence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction - the principal public rationale for the war - hasn't become a big political liability for the administration. That's bad enough. Even more startling is the news from one of this week's polls: despite the complete absence of evidence, 53 percent of Americans believe that Saddam had something to do with 9/11, up from 43 percent before his capture. The administration's long campaign of guilt by innuendo, it seems, is still working.

Seems to me I just said that.

We can - I do - hold out the hope that the surge is a blip, a temporary spike driven by relief, by the desire to believe that we're now safer, that someone actually responsible for 911 has been caught after all the failures and dead ends and going-nowhere prosecutions, that something is being accomplished. But still - but still -

The covers await.