What a tangled web we weave...

http://attendingtheworld.wordpress.com/

In the pages of the Asia Times, the columnist Spengler doesn't mince any words in describing the mess that is American foreign policy:

The United States has misunderstood everyone in the world outside its borders and mismanaged everything. It has done so with a bipartisan consensus so broad and deep that it has no opposition except simple-minded isolationism. America gets unwanted results — most recently in Iraq - because it wants the wrong things in the first place. And there seems to be no way to persuade Americans otherwise. The crumbling of the Iraqi state will provide yet another pretext for mutual recriminations among political parties. The trouble is that both parties wanted the wrong thing to begin with.

Not pretty words, but sometimes the truth hurts.  Find out what both parties wanted, and the inevitable denouement to which it may all lead - it's well worth spending a few minutes - here.