by Steven Vincent

About the author: Steven Vincent is a freelance writer living in New York.

By late October [2003], there seemed widespread agreement in the Western press that the United States was failing in Iraq [after its 2003 invasion], where I had been living for the past month and a half. Saddam Hussein, I was reminded by television reports and pieces on the Internet, was still at large1; the weapons of mass destruction that had been the ostensible reason for American intervention were looking like figments of "sexed-up" intelligence reports, if not a plot by the Bush administration to deceive the American people; and, by precipitously overturning the rock of the Baathist regime, the U.S. had succeeded only in releasing thieves, kidnappers, rapists, terrorists, and suicide bombers to prey...