I very much like the War and Piece blog by Laura Rozen, an experienced war correspondent. In this post, she confesses to being influenced somewhat by neoconservative advocates (although the part I've bolded shows she's not a total convert!):
But I have to say, I am starting to think that the Iraq war was the right thing to do, for none of the stated reasons the Bushies did it. I think if we don't totally let it go to hell that it is good for the Iraqi people, I think it will positively affect the neighbors, and I think it was good to project American power and willingness to take serious casualties to all sorts of potential and current enemies, including Al Qaeda. The negatives are clear to me too, including seriously alienating US allies in Europe, and inciting even more hatred and suspicion of the US in the Arab and Muslim worlds. But still, I want us to succeed in Iraq, in spite of the fact that Bush deserves to lose the election for screwing it up so badly, among other crimes.
I would emphasize in connection with those thoughts that recognizing that the US has a national interest as well as legal obligations in doing a good job in the postwar transition is not the same thing as endorsing Bush's preventive war in Iraq.
But this is also more of an intellectual game than real policy choices at this point. The decision the United States has to make - and there will be more than one decision point - is whether it's practical and desirable to continue to occupy Iraq with an ongoing insurgency and a potential civil war in the making.
The US' ability to insure a desirable outcome with any reasonable or acceptable cost is extremely limited. It's very likely that the eventual resolution of the conflict for the US will be optimal only in the sense of minimizing further pointless losses. I hate to be pessimistic. But I'm not running for office. And the news sounds more pessimistic than otherwise to me.
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