Being Wrong About the Iraq Catastrophe Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry

Lynne Duke for WaPo writes a lengthy piece on the politics of being right, in opposition to the Iraq war before it started. Duke observes how war opponents, like William Odom, Zbig Brzezinski, Barbara Lee, and Jessica Tuchman Matthews (president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace), were "pilloried, penalized or warned to be careful because of their opposition to a powerful president's war." And how they've now gained many adherents to their views, by means of a "snake-like shedding of skin, a policy metamorphosis in which people who once were prominent cheerleaders for the war now are cozying up with the war's early opponents and distancing themselves from their earlier roles." "So many of the people who were wrong have gone on to being very visible pundits without ever admitting how wrong they were," Matthews says. (…) They say "that they are happy to have associated themselves with these views … ," Brzezinski says. "That is the funny part, because you meet people who say, 'Oh, I was with you all along.' "