Over the weekend, I caught some of Raymond Arroyo’s interview with Paul Bremer, George W. Bush’s envoy to Iraq after our invasion. Bremer admitted that Iraqi Christians are worse off now than before the invasion, but he maintained that other Iraqis are “much better off.” In support of his claim that Iraqis are better off, Bremer said that Iraq’s per capita income is now higher, the country is now a democracy, with free newspapers, and Iraqis now have cell phones. Of course, since our invasion, Iraq has seen a bloody civil war, with many assassinations and kidnappings, tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed, and hundreds of thousands have fled the country. And now ISIS is imposing its brutal and barbarous rule on large parts of the country, with the Iraqi army on which we lavished billions of dollars in equipment and training simply melting away rather than fight, leaving that equipment for ISIS. But at least the Iraqis have cell phones!

If those involved with designing and implementing Bush’s Iraq policy had any sense, they would simply keep quiet. Alas, they have no more sense now than they did then.