The PNAC mafia were going to invade Afghanistan and Iraq no matter what.

I remember watching the 2001 inauguration and turning to my wife and saying "I guess this means war with Iraq".

What worries me is that the next administration will not succeed in purging State and Defense of the PNAC right-wingers. That would be a catastrophe for the country.

Interesting how the public perception of these two conflicts is [I think unconsciously] becoming so interchangeable.

“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.” ~ Sir Ernest Benn

Bushco would have likely found an excuse. They certainly found one for Iraq:

Regarding the placement of the Unocal Pipeline, a US Official delivered this ultimatum to the Taliban (via the Pakistani delegation acting as their interlocutors): "Either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs."

...in its policy prescriptions? Lots of mentions of Iraq - where's Afghanistan? To the extent that PNAC or its alumni can be said to have had a coherently expressed policy on Afghanistan and the Taliban prior to 9/11, it was to engage the Taliban in the hopes producing greater stability.

If they wanted to invade Afghanistan pre-9/11, why didn't they hop onto the proposals that had been extensively shopped around official Washington regarding aid to the Northern Alliance? PNAC alumni hopped on 9/11 right from the get go and drove it from Tarnak Farms all the way to Baghdad - why wouldn't they drive from the Panjir down to Kabul? [I mean, yes, the road was pretty crummy pre-'05, but still ;)]

“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.” ~ Sir Ernest Benn

I prefer Lincoln:

At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it?

Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean,
and crush us at a blow?

Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected?

I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad.

If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

1. The wars - particularly the War in Iraq - have greatly contributed to the alarming depletion of our treasury.

2. The failure to get Al-Quida's leadership, the false drumbeat for the Iraq war, the mishandling of Iraq, all have contributed to diminish Bush's ability to get America to listen to him and take what he says seriously.

3. The crossing of lines in the war on terror - Gitmo, torture, renditions, the Iraq invasion, old Europe/new Europe, freedom fries, etc. - have diminished the United States on the world stage, caused other countries to dislike us, and have hurt Bush's ability to influence international events.

To some degree, this crisis is a leadership crisis. A big part of the problem is that people have lost confidence in the financial system, and the Bush administration is incapable of easily restoring that confidence.

Bankruptcy is the result of insolvency, and just about everyone acknowledges that the great problem now is growing insolvency. Since the problem is too big to bail, the US government will become insolvent if it tries, in the sense adding much more debt will result in crushing interest payments and printing will in effect devalue the dollar. There are limits, even to the US Treasury, since the promise to pay government debt and back up the dollar is based on the ability to tax, and there has to be sufficient wherewithal to tax. When the tax burden becomes too great for the economy to bear, or the government cannot borrow enough anymore, or the currency crashes, then the government slips into insolvency and will go bankrupt eventually unless it nationalizes assets to beef up the balance sheet and sells some of them off to increase cash flow.

Could this happen? It seems unthinkable, but before this week many if not most people thought that a global crash was unthinkable.

we blew a lot of our dry powder in Iraq. Over time, $8 to $10 Billion a week adds up - and it is all deficit spending. Bush never asked for any form of revenue enhancement to pay for the war. Cutting taxes in a time of war doesn't help in balancing America's checkbook.

While Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, our invasion of Iraq had everything to do with Bush's reaction to 9/11. And we are more financially fragile, and less able to make the "robust" response Mr. Paulson talked about this evening, because we already have a national debt of $10+ Trillion. We 'only' had a national debt of 5.7 Trillion for our country's entire history when Bush took office.