PS:

The UN Inspectors were right: There were no WMDs.

But that was not the point.

Every week, the present Iraqi government goes out into the desert, turns a shovel and finds another mass grave.

Holbrooke had no idea how right his focus on Halabja was, nor did anyone (including the pockets of Iraqi victims and survivors) have a clear picture of the full scope of the problem.

A revised narrative is warranted to understand this action and the real contributions of our soldiers.

We can, and should, grieve the large number of Iraqi civilians killed and maimed during our term, but there was a truly ugly default process already in motion that, by any reasonable review, would have continued in probably far larger numbers.

We can regret, on a humanitarian and human level, each civilian loss, and especially those that may have been preventable by better handling.

But the "ethnic cleansings" in Iraq were pretty inevitable as score settlings even if, regrettably, those who typically paid the price were, as too often happens under these circumstances, not those who were personally responsible.

"Will Fight For World Peace," is not just a philosophical slogan. Sometimes, and particularly where genocide looms, it is, regrettably, a military mission statement.