Nobody could have predicted . . .

We've all heard that classic chestnut coming from the talking heads on the TV and radio (and Cheney): "Nobody could have predicted" that the Iraq invasion would turn out to have been such a bad idea, or some such CYA sentiment. Of course, this is always just self-serving nonsense served up by the people who brought us this (very predictably) disastorous war.

Plenty of people both in and out of government and the mainstream press called this thing right from the very beginning. When you go back and actually look, it's stunning how true this is. Proving the point, Billmon over at the Whiskey Bar dug into his 2003 archives, and the prescience is undeniable.

Not bad for a blogger.

Just don't tell WSJ editorial features editor Joe Rago. His newspaper's editorial board consistently missed every important point about the Iraq War, but he's busy over at the Opinion Journal writing yet another lazy "blogs are destroying the world" article.

Update:

The Carpetbagger Report points out a deviation from the usual hysterical "blogs are destroying America" articles we usually see in the major papers. Here's the Chicago Sun-Times’ Rich Miller with a defense of the unwashed masses:

This phenomenon is not going away, no matter how much it is dismissed or chastised. The Internet has been seized on as a democratizing tool by millions of perpetually democracy-hungry Americans. Bloggers should definitely be open to criticism by the mainstream media. That’s America. But lumping everyone together with the crackpots is neither fair nor honest. And the fact that so many reporters and pundits can’t seem to get the story right just proves the bloggers’ point that too many of them don’t know what they’re talking about on everything else.