Precautions are always blamed. When they are successful, they are declared to be unnecessary.
—Benjamin Jowett

It is useless for sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism.
—Dean Inge on the League of Nations

In a recent essay about the war in Iraq, Victor Davis Hanson noted that the world of Washington was an “echo chamber.” One creditable—or at least listened to—pundit or politician opines in a way the media likes and, presto, a new bit of conventional “wisdom” is born—or at least reinforced. A mere opinion, often ill-informed, frequently at wide variance with the truth, is repeated often enough, and it suddenly acquires the carapace of general currency that, at a distance, can easily be mistaken for fact. As Hanson shows, what has happened with the war in Iraq provides a sterling example of ...