Foresight Is 20-20

I've given Paul Krugman a bit of guff lately for his Obama-bashing, but it's worth noting that he was one of the people who got the Iraq story right from the beginning... and was vilified for it by the right. He wrote in the NY Times the day before the invasion that-

...What frightens me is the aftermath -- and I'm not just talking about the problems of postwar occupation. I'm worried about what will happen beyond Iraq -- in the world at large, and here at home...

...What scares me most, however, is the home front. Look at how this war happened. There is a case for getting tough with Iraq; bear in mind that an exasperated Clinton administration considered a bombing campaign in 1998. But it's not a case that the Bush administration ever made. Instead we got assertions about a nuclear program that turned out to be based on flawed or faked evidence; we got assertions about a link to Al Qaeda that people inside the intelligence services regard as nonsense. Yet those serial embarrassments went almost unreported by our domestic news media. So most Americans have no idea why the rest of the world doesn't trust the Bush administration's motives. And once the shooting starts, the already loud chorus that denounces any criticism as unpatriotic will become deafening.

So now the administration knows that it can make unsubstantiated claims, without paying a price when those claims prove false, and that saber rattling gains it votes and silences opposition. Maybe it will honorably refuse to act on this dangerous knowledge. But I can't help worrying that in domestic politics, as in foreign policy, this war will turn out to have been the shape of things to come.

And that turned out to be correct. Up until recently, the President has largely gotten his way... a lesson he learned his from his push into Iraq, and the overall lack of pushback he received. The House's recent victory on FISA is a hopeful sign that this is changing.

If anything, Krugman's column gave Bush too much credit, as he-- like many-- predicted a quick and easy victory.

Elsewhere, Editor & Publisher remembers that around 1/3 of American newspapers editorialized against the war, for what it's worth. Last night, Keith Olbermann lamented how little coverage that the war gets these days. Fox News, for instance, featured the least Iraq reporting of any news channel, but the most celebrity gossip. So it's good to know that we've collectively gotten bored with the Iraq saga. It's, after all, super way depressing.