When I knew Iraq was hopeless

Mark Kleiman, in a post noting that Phil Carter has become persona non grata to the remaining pro-war true believers, writes

The first time I knew that all was, almost certainly, lost in Iraq was when Phil told me, during his mid-tour leave, that he and his comrades had received no Arabic-language training stateside on their way to Iraq. But he told me not to mention that fact in this space because he didn't want to put out a discouraging message about a mission to whose success he was still committed. His talk to a packed audience at UCLA Law School, which proudly claims him as an alumnus, was much more up-beat than his private conversation back then.

I can provide a date for the point I knew that the situation in Iraq was completely hopeless: January 28, 2004. On that day, I posted at my previous blog-home, Signifying Nothing, about the White House hiring a 24-year-old with no financial experience to rebuild the Baghdad stock exchange.

I'm not claiming to be particularly prescient, but nothing about this whole fiasco, except Abu Ghraib, has particularly surprised me since then.