Is it possible to be more wrong?

Back when I was protesting the Bush Administration's war on Iraq, I got into a lot of arguments with the pro-war side. And I remember noting that many of our arguments were about facts.

I'm not a pacifist, so we didn't disagree that war was justified if Saddam was a threat to the United States, if he had a nuclear program or hidden WMD, and if a brief and relatively painless war could make democracy flower in the Middle East.

If.

We just disagreed about whether a sensible and responsible citizen should believe those things to be true. I claimed that believing (or claiming to believe) the Bush Administration's obvious falsehoods amounted to an abdication of the responsibilities of a U.S. citizen.

They said it was obvious that the claims of the Bush Administration were in fact true, and that asserting they were not true amounted to delusion or treason.

It was about facts.

And here's the thing: When it comes to the facts, I was right about everything. And they were completely wrong.

I was right that the administration was exaggerating the threat Saddam posed to the point that it constituted a lie. They said Saddam was an imminent threat to the United States. They were completely wrong.

I was right that the best source of information on Saddam's WMD was the word of the international inspections team, which said it could find no evidence of WMD or a WMD program. The pro-war side accepted as an article of faith that there were chemical and biological weapons stockpiles in Iraq was well as a rapidly developing nuclear program--and that the inspectors were either incompetent or on Saddam's side. They were completely wrong.

I was right that the Pentagon had no clear plan beyond bombing the hell out of the country and then hoping for the best. The pro-war side predicted that Iraq would be a model democracy by now--even if they couldn't explain exactly how that was going to happen.

I would love to go back in time to early 2o03 and get some of the pro-war folks I confronted to give an honest answer to this question: "If the inspections team is completely right about Saddam's WMD, if Saddam actually poses no imminent threat whatsoever to the U.S., and if there really is no workable plan to win the peace in Iraq, would you agree we are doing the wrong thing?"

I would imagine the answer would have been Yes, we're doing the wrong thing if those facts are true.

And they were true.

Yet there has been no mea culpa from the pro-war side. Blinded to the obvious by irrational war fever then, they are now blinded to the obvious by pride. Even with the lives of Iraqis and coalition troops at stake, their pride is worth too much to them to confess that they were wrong and start working to correct this huge mistake and prevent one like it from happening again. As always, these brave noncombatants are willing to let others pay the price for their love of war.

Kos:

In the feverish minds of the war apologists, it doesn't matter that no WMDs were found, that torture chambers are still open for business, that this war is now rivaling Saddam's brutality for sheer number of Iraqis killed, that the Army, Marines, and National Guard are all having trouble recruiting, that our equipment is degrading to the point where we're creating a hollow military, that the war is costing us $200 billion and counting, that Israel is not safer as a  result of this war, that nearly 1,600 allied troops and counting have died on this fool's errand, that the US's original choice to lead Iraq -- Chalabi -- was an Iranian spy who told our enemies that we had cracked their communications code, that most of Iraq is not under government control, that terrorists are now using the lawlessness in Iraq to recruit and train a whole new generation of terrorists, that our "Coalition of the Willing" is now a mere shell of its former self, that the world hates the United States, that the Euro is suddenly the hot currency, that Europe and Asia are both creating security organizations excluding the US, and that tens of thousands of our soldiers are coming home physically and mentally maimed.

None of that matters to them.

But they see the war getting out of hand. They've see our chances of victory go from little to nothing. And they've got to blame someone. Anyone. And of course, it can't be Saint George, because he's perfect and can do no wrong. So blame Kennedy. Blame Boxer. Blame France. Blame Canada. Blame anti-war bloggers. Because it is they who have botched up the Iraqi campaign to the point of no hope. If it wasn't for them, our troops would still be basking in a flood of rose petals.

The faith-based lunatics taking up residence in the White House and the Pentagon have ample ideological company in Tennessee law schools and other hidey holes of the wingnut blogosphere.

But at the end of the day, whether they'll ever admit it or not -- we were right, they were wrong. Reality isn't being too kind to their side.