At dinner last night with some old family friends, I was asked to give a coherent account of why the Bush administration decided to go to war in Iraq. I've watched the issue for five years now, read countless articles, bunches of books, attended dozens of panels, and even interviewed Iraq experts for various articles, and I still can't do it. I can outline six or seven or twelves rationalization that convinced the war's supporters once the attack was on the table. But I can't lay out the logical chain of events that led the administration to bring up the idea of invading Iraq.
