Your graph illustrates well the closed mind that Bush projects. No matter what happens, good or bad, it justifies his position. As a candidate for Congress in the Philadelphia area, it is my strong hope that a critical number of common-sense Democrats, along with Howard Dean, get elected and get America off the road to the massive casualties of Vietnam, and on the road to improved relations with the rest of the world and improved lives for the people of both Iraq and the U.S.

Mark Cohen: wouldn't you agree that most Iraqis are better off more now than when Saddam was in charge?

I'm willing to be money that there are more Iraqis that would say YES than there are Americans that would say NO....

It is gross arrogance to assume that an act which results in people being generally "better off" is morally justified. There are people who might be "better off" without their parents, spouses, or their boss, or their president, but that is no moral justification for killing anyone. THis may seem to be an extreme example, but we are talking about war here, against American values of international relations, international standards, and outside international institutions.

Besides all that, even if one could justify war based on how much "better off" the world would is after the fact, one would have to be much less selective and much more responsible than the Bush administartion has been in evaluating how much better off the world is and will be. Are Americans better off? Safer? Hundreds of them have been killed in a conflict that has produced no tanglible results in the war on terrorism, and several setbacks. What about future costs? What is the effect for Iraqis and Americans of our adoption of pre-emption (when of all countries, we should need pre-emption least of all), or the low esteem in which we are now held? The effects of the Iraq invasion are not only in the past, but stretch far into the future. Is one two-bit dictator worth all that?

Of course, even if the balance of that equation turned out to prove that the world is really not "better off" after our invasion, the Bushites would not see any problem. The important thing is that we intended to make the world better off. We intended not to kill civilians (many more than our own casualties). We intended to establish order in the country after our invasion, never mind that we were totally irrepsonsible in actually making realistic provisions for such. We intended to spend much fewer tax dollars on the adventure, but who knew? Whomever we invade, kill, imprison and bomb, we always intend to make everyone better off, and so everything we do is justified.

The last, worn thread of self-respect that warbloggers have is based on the crudest mixture of utilitarian and intentionalist ethics.