I'm glad to see you back, Teribus - but there really isn't any need to go lashing out in that petulant way.

"...the British Army have got one of the best "dirty tricks" departments in the business." True. So it's better not to take all that is said on its part or on its behalf at face value. That's a pretty good rule generally. Press officers spin stories, papers spin stories, witnesses get all subjective in what they recall and say...

There's a story in the papers today about a gorilla using a walking stick while wading through a swamp, to avoid falling down a hole. I think that shows the right attitude. (And the fact I take that link from the Houston Chronicle doesn't mean that I necessarily see the Houstion Chronicle as my media source of choice, Teribus, just that it's a convenient source here.)

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"The problems in Iraq were never going to be solved overnight and any who ever thought that was being terribly naive." The interesting question is how many of the public figures who claimed that it could all be sorted out rapidly, and that the invading forces would be welcomed were being naive, and how many were lying. I'd say that, on balance, there was more of them lying than naive.

The conventional way for politicians to try to claim the escape route of naivety is to start talking about "the luxury of exercising hindsight", when the actual point at issue is whether they actually exercised foresight, which isn't a luxury, but a duty.