Pre-emption in Iraq, learning the wrong lessons!

As the world now knows, the intelligence was wrong. Saddam had neither ties to bin Laden nor weapons of mass destruction. The cost of this misapplication of pre-emption — in U.S. lives, money and credibility — has been incalculable.

So what has Bush learned? Officially, at least, not much. On Thursday, the White House published its first National Security Strategy since the one that enshrined the Bush Doctrine.

Perhaps not surprisingly for an administration loath to admit error, the document casts Iraq as a pre-emption success. "With the elimination of Saddam's regime, this threat has been addressed once and for all," it declares. The pre-emption policy "remains the same." Talk about learning the wrong lessons.