Forget "I told you so"...

Hunter at dailyKos precisely captures my frustration with people (read: commentators, pundits, bloggers, officials) who love every aspect of anything that the U.S. government does, up until the instant when they realize that some particular thing is over the line and shocking, terrible, making things worse, etc.

And now -- just now -- we still have pillars of international expertise figuring out that maybe, maybe this fine-tuned, no-trial, no-Geneva, torture-who-you-want policy wasn't so bright an idea after all.

Great tagline too: "Several Blindingly Obvious Conclusions Found Dead."

I'm telling you, there's no glory in feeling right after the fact, only an increased sense of frustration and hopelessness. Long before Gitmo, long before Abu Ghraib, long before 1600 dead, there were lots of intelligence officials saying No WMD, tons of troops needed, plan for the long haul. And only now are we finding out that sometimes the experts are right, and sometimes having the smart people making the decisions might save us all a lot of woe. Grrrrrr....

Update: Bob Harris points out a list of folks who were talking right out in the open about this stuff -- real experts, not secret sources in a darkened garage -- and wonders when the press will begin to notice this "downpour of Deep Throats" . . .