And to think, I accused the pro-war side of bad faith

Last week I issued a challenge to bloggers to write an entry called "What I was wrong about in March 2003" -- the month that the United States invaded Iraq, interrupting the ongoing U.N.-sanctioned inspections of that country for weapons of mass destruction.

Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit.com took the challenge and discovered that in March 2003 he asserted in real time that:

1) The inspections are working and are the best path to reach conclusions about Iraq's alleged WMD.

2) The Bush Administration case for war is fundamentally built on lies.

3) The Bush Administration is too incompetent to be trusted with their grand plan to remake the Middle East with military force.

4) And therefore this war is a terrible idea and will most likely come to no good for the United States or Iraq.

Oh, wait. Those are my March 2003 archives. Glenn's are a little different.

His March 2003 archives are actually a parade of nonstop support for the war and demonization of all who favored inspections over invasion. Not that you would know this from Glenn's representation. He lists 20 links, many of which have little or nothing to do with the most important event that happened in March 2003, and none of which highlight the fundamental error Glenn made -- that he supported the war.

Reading Instapundit.com's archives of that month is like reading an alternate history, and I recommend checking it out for yourself (see weeks 1, 2, 3, 4). Here are some items that Glenn apparently overlooked when reviewing his March 2003 performance:

The alternate-reality March 2003 of Instapundit.com is one in which European countries with highly suspect motives were blind to the "smoking guns" that demonstrated Saddam's obvious possession of weapons of mass destruction; the corrupt and "lackadaisacal" inspections process was "bogus" because it couldn't find those WMD; here at home rampaging "pro-Saddam" demonstrators were beating the hell out of patriotic "pro-America" and "pro-liberation" demonstrators (by the way, the anti-war rallies were poorly attended while the pro-war movement was burgeoning); and the President had "a very real desire to avoid war," which represented "a 'window of opportunity' for democratizing the region."

And I didn't even get through all four weeks! (But Glenn did. In fact, in his own summary he bypasses all of the embarrassing inspections-bashing links above and skips ahead to an entry from April 2, where French and German support for inspections over war was somehow converted into their responsibility for the war. Don't ask me.)

Glenn implies that my claim to discover my mistakes of March 2003 was not made in good faith, but it was. The thing is, because I was right about the following...

1) The inspections are working and are the best path to reach conclusions about Iraq's alleged WMD.

2) The Bush Administration case for war is fundamentally built on lies.

3) The Bush Administration is too incompetent to be trusted with their grand plan to remake the Middle East with military force.

4) And therefore this war is clearly a terrible idea and will most likely come to no good for the United States or Iraq.

...I can't very well call myself wrong about these conclusions. I did sincerely search for where I did go wrong, and I did sincerely discover what my error was.

My error was believing that the loudest proponents of the war actually cared whether they were right or wrong.

They didn't care then, and they don't care now.

But at least I'm not surprised.