The photo-op summit in Baghdad this weekend reminded me of this column I wrote in April of 2003, even before Bush declared “Mission Accomplished.” I had been working for Time Magazine all of four months at that point, and various editors thought I’d gone off the deep end: The Bush Administration would never take part in a meeting of Iraq’s neighbors! The neighbors would never agree on a common agenda!
Well, we’re still looking for a common agenda. But I wonder what would have happened if Bush had brought the neighbors into the peace process back April of 2003, when Donald Rumsfeld was celebrating the obscene looting Baghdad as an expression of Iraqi freedom… Could Iraq have turned out any worse than it is now?
