Still, Jeb Bush had a point when he noted that, at the time, "almost everybody" in political Washington was for the war. True enough: as policy disasters go, the Iraq War was as bipartisan as the subprime loan crisis.

On the war's tenth anniversary a couple of years back, the New Republic's John Judis recalled "what it was like to oppose the Iraq War in 2003." His memory jibes with mine: it was pretty damned lonely. Well before "Shock and Awe," hawkish arguments had achieved near full-spectrum dominance over the minds of Beltway policy elites, and the invasion and occupation of Iraq was shaping up as a horrific idea whose time had come.

But it rankled a bit when Judis wrote that "except for Jessica Mathews at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington's thinktank honchos were also lined up behind the war." Not to take anything away from Ms. Mathews, but the late, great Bill Niskanen had to count as a "think tank honcho" if anyone did, and he opposed the war vigorously, early, and often.