The “I was almost right.” defense has within it the same kind of critical analysis displayed by a child wanting a new toy. This ONE thing will make the world perfect.

When you study failures as much as I have you find that it is never due to just ONE thing. One thing leads to another and another, and frequently it can all be traced back to some basic philosophical error. And the same thing is true of success, only we don’t study it as much.

When you say “I would have been right if THIS ONE THING had not happened.” that ignores that a bunch of other things could have happened, too. Turkey could have allowed us to invade from their side. France and Germany could have replaced their crooked leaders earlier. Large elements of the old Iraq Army could have defected the moment that OIF started. The list is endless, even more endless than the things that went “wrong” for the prophet.

Obama might as well have said that “I knew that the Democrats were going to take over Congress in 2006 and that would both demoralize the Bush Admin and encourage the insurgents in Iraq. It’s not my fault that Bush did not know when he was beaten. It just shows again how stupid the man really is.”