Boy, who could've predicted that?

Kanan Makiya -- one of the Iraqi exiles who beat the drums of war loudest and longest in Washington -- joins the ranks of the "oops"ers.

‘It was a disaster, an unmitigated disaster,’ Makiya said. ‘I was just so upset, even on the verge of tears. It was the antithesis of everything I had been working for. Just like everything about the war, it was an opportunity wasted.’ He catalogued the errors - including his own - that led to the present bloodbath. It is all a remarkable change of tone for the man who was once a friend of Ahmed Chalabi, has been praised in public by Vice President Dick Cheney and is highly regarded by anti-Saddam Iraqi democrats.

Makiya, a professor at Brandeis University in Massachusetts, says his disaffection with the ‘Iraq project’ has been growing for some time. ‘Now it seems necessary to reflect on the society that has gotten itself into this mess. [!!!] A question that looms more and more for me is: just what did 30 years of dictatorship do to 25 million people?’

Of course, we didn't know that the Iraqis had been ruled by a dictator for 30 years before we invaded, so it's all forgiven, I'm sure.

"Gotten itself in to this mess." What, you don't remember how Saddam Hussein invaded Iraq and deposed himself? God that pisses me off. As if everything that's befallen Iraq has everything to do with Saddam Hussein, and absolutely nothing has anything to do with the actual policies Makiya advocated. What a coward. Even when he's trying to be "honest", he still needs to try and escape responsibility.

Not that I blame him. If I had to face up to the kind of horrors Makiya is responsible for, I'd probably have chosen suicide sometime in 2005. 2006, tops.