The Washington Monthly: "VINTAGE WOLFOWITZ....In celebration of Paul Wolfowitz's decision to stay at the Pentagon, I'd like to take this chance to reprint my favorite Wolfowitz testimony of all time. This is from the New York Times account of Wolfowitz's testimony before Congress on February 28, 2003, a mere three weeks before the invasion of Iraq:"

...

"....Enlisting countries to help to pay for this war and its aftermath would take more time, he said. 'I expect we will get a lot of mitigation, but it will be easier after the fact than before the fact,' Mr. Wolfowitz said. Mr. Wolfowitz spent much of the hearing knocking down published estimates of the costs of war and rebuilding, saying the upper range of $95 billion was too high....Moreover, he said such estimates, and speculation that postwar reconstruction costs could climb even higher, ignored the fact that Iraq is a wealthy country, with annual oil exports worth $15 billion to $20 billion. 'To assume we're going to pay for it all is just wrong,' he said.

You just can't make this stuff up.

And for the record, it was about a week later when I reversed course and began opposing the Iraq war. This testimony wasn't the only reason, of course, but it was sure part of it. It was stuff like this that finally made it completely clear that even the smart people in the Bush administration (and Wolfowitz is a smart guy) didn't have a clue what they were getting themselves into."

(Via ArmsControlWonk.com.)