"I read it on the Internet!"

The following was found in a thread spawned from a post over at Hullabaloo (it was penned by this guy). I thought it was spot on:

Speaking as someone living in a country (Japan) that, at one time, experienced a military dictatorship that presided over a 250-year period of modest economic growth, what amazes me is the mind bendingly wasteful incompetence of the Iraq adventure. The transparent deception with which the proceedings were kicked off was, and is, sick-making enough by itself; but what really astonishes is the childish abandon with which resources of all kinds have been squandered on this fool's gambit, as if pride and violence and knavishness and exceptionalism had some inherent value standing on their own. The United States is evidently not yet driven by a serious need for resources. There is apparently so much slack that both diplomacy and war can be treated as luxury consumption items. When the nation's survival comes to depend on these skills, well, good luck.