A simple question. A horrible answer.

Obsidian Wings asks,

I still, against reason it seems at time, hope a stable democracy will arise out of the ashes of chaos in Iraq, but even that is looking more and more like wishful thinking, so that unanswered question haunts me: what did those 1,000 troops die for?

Brad deLong tries to answer,

This question has a straightforward answer. The first 100 died (and the first 500 were maimed) to liberate Iraq from a dreadful tyrant who had no operational ties with Al Qaeda, no weapons of mass destruction, posed no threat to the U.S., and posed little threat to his neighbors.

The next 900 died (and the next 4500 were maimed) because:

1. Cheney and Rumsfeld wanted to show that we could conquer, occupy, and control Iraq with a small force all by ourselves so that the Syrians and the Iranians would be scared of what we could do with the rest of our army.

2. Nobody in the White House dared propose any change in policy when it became clear to everybody that Cheney and Rumsfeld were wrong.

Further conclusions to draw from this straightforward answer are left as an exercise for the reader.

I am uncomfortable with DeLong's glibness, but he is essentially correct.

It is amazing, the twisted (and I mean that in the both senses of the word --confused and evil) logic that underscored the Designated Idiot's column yesterday (and led to Obsidian Wing's question). It will also likely underscore Bush's performance in the upcoming foreign policy debate. The "logic" goes something like this: "If you don't agree with the way the Preznit is conducting the war, than you are implying that the troops have died for nothing."

Truth is, the men and women who've died or been maimed did so defending their mates, but beyond that, I can't answer the question, just as Laura Bush can't answer Sue Niederer, the woman who confronted FLOTUS last week in New Jersey.

"I asked him if he wanted to go back," she said. "Seth said no. He told me we were losing the war. He told me we could not win a war when we did not know who our enemies were. He told me it was a waste, but he also told me he had to return to get the 18 men in his platoon home safely."

SOON after he died, Mrs. Niederer said, she and her son's widow ran into a wall of military bureaucracy. As an observant Jew, Mrs. Niederer asked that her son not be embalmed or undergo an autopsy, requests that she said were ignored. She asked to go to Dover Air Force Base to meet her son's coffin, but says she was told that was against the rules. And she says she has tried reaching members of her son's platoon to learn the circumstances of his death, especially after the Army told her he had been killed trying to defuse a bomb.

"He had no training in bomb detection or in defusing bombs," she said. "He did not have proper equipment. When I complained in public about the inadequate training and lack of equipment, the Army changed the story. They told me he was not trying to defuse a bomb. I still don't know how he died. They won't let me speak to or contact members of his platoon."

It must be comforting for those widows and mothers who've lost their sons who, unlike Ms. Niederer, believe Bush's lies and platitudes.