Here's why I should wait to read the Times till morning

...because this is the kind of stuff that could give me nightmares.

After the speech, I asked him about the best ways to spread democracy. “We have a variety of tools. Not all of them are hammers. Ronald Reagan deployed more of the array than many,” he said. Reagan used forceful rhetoric, but also small displays of force — shooting down Libyan jets over the Gulf of Sidra — to demonstrate American resolve.

“I don’t think you invade Iraq to bring liberty. You do it to eliminate an unstable regime and because sanctions are breaking down and you get liberty as a byproduct,” he continued. I asked him whether invading Iraq was a good idea, knowing what we know now. He looked at me for a bit and said, “I don’t know.”

The Secretary of Defense doesn't know whether invading Iraq was a good idea, despite the fact that he told Snuffalupagus on Sunday that he would recommend veto of the Webb Amendment if it had passed. Gen. David Petraeus told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he didn't know if Americans were safer as a result of four years of war with a cost of over 3700 lives and tens of thousands of limbs, psyches, and ruined marriages and futures. Nobody knows why we're there, nobody knows if it was a good idea, nobody knows whether it makes us safer. And yet we're supposed to trust these guys in perpetuity that this war is necessary?