Jay Rosen has an amazing post up that gives us the litany of Iraq war supporters who, five years after being proven wrong, have decided to treat us all with the Bush Incompetence Dodge.  It goes like this: "I was right to support the war.  Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld just messed it up is all."

This is nonsense.  You go to war with the president you have, not the president you want.  Bush had already failed to capture Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan so there was plenty to question about the Bush administrations competence in military matters.

But set that aside.  The larger issue is that invading Iraq was never a good idea that was badly executed.  It was and remains a bad idea and the lousy execution of it is just a secondary complaint.

Yes, a competent president would have handled things differently -- by not invading Iraq.  When faced with this decision during his own presidency, Bush's father knew it'd be a bad idea to charge through to Baghdad, depose Saddam Hussein and take responsibility for Iraq's future development.

Even when, under Bill Clinton is became official policy to support the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, it was never considered a good idea to use our military to do it.  Competent people simply didn't want to invade Iraq.

Five years later a bunch of war supporters are asked if they have regrets and instead of owning up to their own mistakes they are trying to convince us that they were right and it was Bush who got it wrong.

Well, no.  That doesn't fly.  They knew who the president was and no other president would have done this at all.  The incompetence started with the decision to invade and all of the other incompetence followed from that.

I'm responding a bit to an errant comment here -- a Hillary supporter said that he/she would vote for McCain in the general unless Hillary won the primary.  I think it was an idle threat and thought I'd quickly point out why.

One of the things that we Hillary supporters have contributed to the primary is an attention to policy detail.  We're supposed to be the "policy matters" crowd and it's because of us that there can be public dust ups over who has mandates in their health plan and who doesn't.

If being a Hillary supporter means being a policy person then you can't vote for John McCain even if the convention delegates decide to dump both Clinton and Obama in favor of a surprise Leonardo Di Caprio long shot run.

Here's why:

You support Hillary because she believes in withdrawing troops from Iraq as soon as possible.  John McCain believes that "as soon as possible" means 100 years.

You support Hillary because you believe in universal healthcare.  John McCain doesn't actually believe in universal healthcare at all.  He seems to think the current system is okay and he would rather have people go without healthcare than get the government involved.

Hillary Clinton is pro-choice.  John McCain is anti-abortion and is coutning on you to believe he's lying to you about that in order to court voters who agree with the average Clinton supporter on, oh, nothing.

Hillary Clinton is not 847 years old and losing her mind.  John McCain is.

So there you have it.  If you support Hillary Clinton then you are for withdrawing troops from Iraq, for universal healthcare, for a woman's right to choose and eager to have a president who will not be entering senility on day one.  So how can you possibly say you would vote for McCain over Obama?

We're supposedly issues-based supporters who are maybe suspicious of Obama's emotional appeal.  On the issues, Obama is a better choice for a Clinton supporter than McCain is.  If Clinton loses the primary, a Clinton vote for McCain is just a vote cast out of spite.  If we're willing to vote with spite than any criticisms we might have uttered about Obama's appeals to emotion over reason are pretty hypocritical.

I'll never quite believe that we need to fundamentally change America.  But I do believe that we have to change the way we run it in a very practical way.  Only two credible candidates running for president agree with me about what those changes are.  Unfortunately they're in the same party and they probably can't stand each other anymore, so there can be only one.

And it can't be the senile man from the other side.