"Amen. And amen. And amen!"

Again, from Tom Friedman's NYT op-ed:

We need Iraqi leaders to prove to their people that they are not just venal elites out to seize the spoils of power more than to seize this incredible opportunity to remake Iraq. We need to see real institution-builders emerge, including builders of a viable justice system and economy. And we need to be wary that too big an army and too much oil can warp any regime.

For some reason I am reminded of Lawrence Garfield's speech to the shareholders of New England Wire & Cable in the film Other People's Money:

Amen. And amen. And amen. You have to forgive me. I'm not familiar with the local custom. Where I come from, you always say "Amen" after you hear a prayer. Because that's what you just heard -- a prayer. Where I come from, that particular prayer is called "The Prayer for the Dead." You just heard The Prayer for the Dead, my fellow stockholders, and you didn't say, "Amen."

This company is dead. I didn't kill it. Don't blame me. It was dead when I got here. It's too late for prayers. For even if the prayers were answered, and a miracle occurred, and the yen did this, and the dollar did that, and the infrastructure did the other thing, we would still be dead.

This war is dead - don't blame me, it was dead when I got here.

It was dead the moment Rummy responded to rioting & the complete breakdown of civil society in Iraq with, "Stuff happens."
It was dead as soon as W's administration used Helmuth von Moltke's quotation, "No plan survives contact with the enemy", to justify simply NOT PLANNING for post-invasion Iraq.