Reviewing the bipartisan justifications for war in Iraq should serve as a stark reminder to brash liberals, confident conservatives, and strong-government types across the political spectrum that government is a foolishly, frustratingly human endeavor, its projects marked by error and hubris, arrogance and incompetence. To put it bluntly: These people do not know what they are doing—and neither, as the fawning media coverage of Bush’s war of choice reveals, does anyone else. Quite the opposite, in fact. They all believe fervently that they know exactly what they are doing, that their plans are foolproof, their designs magnificent, their will strong, their aims noble and historic and humanitarian. But what bloody follies like Iraq reveal is that so many of those tasked with either making or explaining the decisions that affect the lives (and deaths) of thousands or even millions are self-deluding fools, oblivious to the consequences of their own power, and their plans and intentions—whether good or bad or indifferent—do not matter when compared with their violent, ugly results.