Fox News anchor Shepard Smith provided some useful history on Friday about many of the same people who are now pressuring the Obama administration to take military action in Iraq, where Islamic militants have overrun two cities in recent days as they march toward Baghdad.

Smith kicked off his afternoon broadcast with a recap of the deteriorating security situation in Iraq before he offered a barely veiled commentary on the debate playing out here in the United States.

“Are we about to be drawn back into a conflict in Iraq?” Smith asked. “The same people who 12 years ago told us this will be quick, this will be easy, this will be inexpensive, they will see us as liberators, it’s the right thing to do, are now telling us: It’s the right thing to do. What’s the endgame? Who’s thought this through?”

Later in the broadcast, Smith, who’s earned a reputation for occasionally bucking his employer’s conservative orthodoxy, told fellow Fox News host Chris Wallace he still hasn’t forgotten “being bamboozled” by the Bush administration before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

“Well, I remember it. I think it would be wrong for us to just sit around and listen and not ask big questions,” Smith said.

At the end of his interview with Wallace, Smith said he believes the media “will operate differently this time than it did the last time.”

“I hope we do, hope we do,” Smith said. “I hope we ask lots of questions.”

President Obama on Friday did not rule out some kind of U.S. military action in Iraq, but he said there will be no American ground troops deployed there.