o use them, except that his top generals finally turned those elaborate leaflets over and betrayed him. Freed and liberated of their tormentor, the people of Baghdad dance in the streets. The dawn of a new Iraq arises as a bastion of stability and democracy, initiating a "change in the neighborhood" in the Middle East. We see the domino effect in reverse–with autocratic regimes tumbling toward democracy, reminding us once of Eastern Europe in 1989–and even the Israel-Palestine feud is settled. Bush coasts to a second term by stuffing the ballot box with ticker tape, before heading to Oslo to accept the Nobel Prize for Peace. Such an outcome would yield a celebration of festivities–noticeably in the public discourse and even in our scholarship. There would be a feeling of triumph like the one that came about after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
             At the other hand, imagine that the U.S. crusade in Iraq shifts and becomes sour and nasty. Hundreds of Americans and thousands of Iraqis die in a televised urban war. A drifted scud hits Tel Aviv, with toxin agents aboard. A sleeper cell strikes deep in the American heartland with catastrophic results The economy sputters. A once audacious cowboy, his ten-gallon hat in rags, rides off into a Texas sunset, four years ahead of plan. Such an outcome would naturally trigger a generation of soul-searching, cynical second-guessing, finger-pointing, and humility in the American psyche. The spectre of Vietnam would ascend from its grave.
             Most likely the war will not turn out as clearly as either of these extremes. We might expect a partial victory, which by definition means a partial defeat. The outcome might be muddled rather than clear, shades of gray rather than stark black and white. Even a declared military triumph will have pyrrhic dimensions.
             In that case, there will be little consensus on the key questions of why we are not given all of the info...