MIND YOU, HE SAYS HE STILL WOULD HAVE SUPPORTED THE WAR. Andrew Sullivan writes:

The one anti-war argument that, in retrospect, I did not take seriously enough was a simple one. It was that this war was noble and defensible but that this administration was simply too incompetent and arrogant to carry it out effectively. I dismissed this as facile Bush-bashing at the time. I was wrong. I sensed the hubris of this administration after the fall of Baghdad, but I didn't sense how they would grotesquely under-man the post-war occupation, bungle the maintenance of security, short-change an absolutely vital mission, dismiss constructive criticism, ignore even their allies (like the Brits), and fail to shift swiftly enough when events span out of control.

No chortling here. This is a monumental tragedy. I opposed the war from the beginning, but always thought that the reasons to go to war were good ones - not WMDs (remember, the UN weapons inspectors were just starting to gear up) and the non-existent ties to Al Qaeda, but the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe caused by Saddam Hussein's Hitlerian regime, compounded by more than a decade of Western sanctions.

If Bush had only taken the time and shown the patience to build a genuine international coalition, things might look very different today.