Teribus, there you go again, objecting to 20/20 hindsight. I'm sure you'd prefer us to put on blindfolds when looking backwards. Anyway, try this for a dollop of 20/20 foresight, which I've just put up as a link in the 'quagmire' thread: Tony Benn, House of Commons, 1998. After clicking the clickie, follow the "audio gallery" link and select extract #2. It's only very short, but plenty of 20/20 in there.

What did you make of that little point of McGrath's (which I have also posted somewhere) about Tony Blair telling parliament that war was the only way to stop Iraq's WMDs getting into the hands of terrorists, when his own intellience agencies had told him that war would increase the risk?

I don't manage to read your posts in detail, Teribus, but I realise what I'm missing when my eye lights on such gems of scholarship as Germany is certainly not the cheapest country to live in.... I mean that clinches it: the combined governments of Iraq, Iran, North Korea and Saudi must have been in it up to their eyeballs.