Timothy Garton Ash has written two of my favorite books on recent German history ("In Europe's Name" and "The File") and is, generally, one of my go-to guys for commentary. Those two books and numerous articles have consistently shown him to be clever and possessed of keen perception and critical thinking skill. With that in mind, I was troubled by his "well . . . " commentary on the Iraq war back during the "should we?" phase, a year or so ago, and his We were duped would be funny if it weren't so sad.

How could HE have been duped? I find it profoundly freaky to watch so many of my intellectual betters just now come to grips with things which, from my perspective, were blindingly fucking obvious from the start.

OF COURSE Dubyah (and Blair, and Howard, and Aznar) lied! That's what they do! Why on earth would they have told the truth just this once? There were SO MANY reasons to doubt them, too.

Makes me wanna holler.