Mistakes, after all, are endemic to foreign and military policy given the unpredictability of events and the difficulty of securing reliable information in a place like Iraq.

History is replete with examples of empires mounting impressive military campaigns on the cusp of their impending economic collapse.

Liberals do not appear to address potential solutions with anything like the far right's aura of God-given self-confidence.

Ironically, tendency to ignore inconvenient facts and unwelcome evidence is actually President Reagan's true legacy, as I noted in 'The Nation' back in 2000, before the current right-wing mania for President Reagan gained its full force.

The war on terrorism was a bait and switch operation.

The White House and the media need one another in order to be successful in their jobs. The White House depends on the media to make its case to the public; the media need the White House to fill their airtime and news columns.

There are more people at Obama's table offering ideas than there were five years ago, but when it came to facing up to the Republicans' threat to force a double-dip recession if they didn't get their millionaires' tax cut, they still amounted to nothing. And therein lies our fundamental problem.