"Fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - you can't get fooled again."

"Fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - you can't get fooled again."

In the spirit of James Poniewozik's superb new rule on Iraq, brought to us here by Barb Morrill, I present the following.

Today, David Brooks offered his opinion on Iraq, 2014. The guts are in the final paragraph, where he called for: "a more forward-leaning American posture around the world, an awareness that sometimes a U.S.-created vacuum can be ruinous. The president says his doctrine is don’t do stupid stuff. Sometimes withdrawal is the stupidest thing of all."

Hmmmmm. You know what. I don't think so. The stupidest thing of all is invading a country that hadn't attacked us, posed no real threat to us, had no weapons capable of reaching us, or any capability to produce such weapons for the foreseeable future.

To fulfill the Poniewozik Rule, let's see what Mr. Brooks was saying about the Iraq war before George W. Bush gave the order to invade:

The president has remained resolute. Momentum to liberate Iraq continues to build. The situation has clarified, and history will allow clear judgments about which leaders and which institutions were up to the challenge posed by Saddam and which were not.

I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaida. I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars.

In other words, David Brooks was on board. Who wasn't, might we ask? Barack Obama. Remember what the current president said , at the same time Brooks was leading the charge in favor of invasion?So, when it comes to Iraq 2014, who do you want to listen to? The guy(s), like Brooks (or John McCain ), who were dead wrong about Iraq 2003, or people like Barack Obama, who was 100 percent right. That's a rhetorical question, in case you're wondering.