re: I forgot that security must come before democracy.

Well, I think Joel Joffe's got it all backwards. Here's how:

1) Start with the US. We didn't start the Iraq war in a Constitutional fashion. (By the way, the US is not a "democracy." I don't know of any current government in the world that's a democracy. There was a democracy in Athens, for a while. However, slaves and women were not a part of it — so how "democratic," demos--of the people — was even THAT sole exemplar of the concept?)

That is, we had a complaisant, compliant, acquiescent, obsequious Congress that abdicated its Constitutional duty to watch over the Executive Branch. The Republican majority hardly even introduced its own legislation. They waited for word from 1600 PA Ave. And when the Democrats got a titular majority in the Senate, and a real one in the House, same thing; a complaisant, oath-foreswearing majority that just barely managed to introduce some legislation, which the acting vice president (Bush) vetoed, or signed and then line-item vetoed with an unconstitutional "signing statement veto".

2). Now that we all know that the "selling of the Iraq Invasion" was based on lies from the Administration and fecklessness from Congress, we need to back up even farther to the "casus belli," the "excuse for war" (rather than "cause of war"), which was 9/11/2001.

We know from our own intuition and now from Philip Shenon's "the Commission, etc." that the official conspiracy theory, from the Official 9/11 Commission, was largely a fable written by Philip Zelikow, a Condoleeza Rice groupie (or leech, depending on how detestably fraudulent you suspect the man to be) and Shrubbie/Bushie/Darthie insider, facilitated by a feckless pair of co-conspirators (or co-commissioners, again, depending on your view of history), Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, aided and abetted by eight equally complaisant fellow "Commissioners" who were apparently so cowed by Zelikow's yelling at them and getting theatrically (or physiologically) red in the face, or, even worse, cowed by the FEAR of enduring one of Zelikow's tantrums, that no one told this "Man of a Million Conflicts of Interest" to pack his bags and shove off--with a hearty, "Don't let the doorknob hitcha where the good Lord splitcha."

So we know that we do NOT know almost everything about 9/11. That's a pretty significant lacuna, lapse, gap in our understanding, isn't it?

We have to re-investigate the whole matter. Actually, we have to INvestigate the whole matter--there's no "re" involved, as the official effort was not an investigation at all: No peer-reviewed forensics; a crime scene that was scrubbed, wiped out, destroyed, illegally; other evidence (surveillance tapes of the Pentagon, recorded testimony of FAA flight controllers, in-flight recorders [a k a black boxes]) destroyed or withheld; dozens of eye-witnesses whose testimony was not analyzed; residual physical evidence that was not tested; witnesses that were not sworn to be truthful (like president Cheney and vice president Bush); a staff of 80-odd investigators who were not allowed to collaborate, communicate or, essentially, investigate; government officials, military generals and admirals who were allowed to perjure themselves without sanction. Etc.

3) With a failure of veracity right from the start in launching both the invasions of Afghanistan and the Iraq, what good result could have come from our efforts? Lies have nothing to do with security. Security, IMHO, comes from the conditions and priorities laid out in the Preamble to the US constitution. a) form a more perfect Union; b) establish justice (not lies); c) insure domestic Tranquility (not fear and trembling, base on even more lies); d) THEN provide for the common defense; e) which then might provide the space for promoting the general Welfare and securing the Blessings of Liberty.

If there is no union, however imperfect, if there is no justice and no domestic tranquility, there is NOTHING TO DEFEND. Iraq was like a volume of people inside an envelope, a balloon of fear. We popped the balloon.

4) The lies upon which the Iraqi Invasion were based kept on shifting, an indication that they were not the real reason we invaded Iraq.
a) If we invaded because there was an imminent attack on the US, when there was not, we could have left.
b) If we invaded to topple Saddam, we could have left when we achieved that goal.
c) If we invaded to give the Iraqis self-government (or a constitutional government if they wanted to form one), we would have handed over power immediately (as Jake Garner was doing, before he was removed--because that was NOT what the plan was all about) and left.
d) If we were not planning on staying in Iraq "for 100 years," or whatever garbage McCain is spewing these days, we would not have built/been building 14 (fourteen) PERMANENT -- or "enduring" to use the administration's lexicon of lies — bases in Iraq, and one gigundous Embassy City, bigger even than Vatican City in Rome.
e) If we were not in Iraq to establish a permanent presence in the Middle East, we would already have left.

f) And if we were not planning to be in Iraq until the oil ran out, we would not have had Americans "help" draft the "hydrocarbon laws" and would not be insisting that we would not "leave" until those laws, which I think purport to give the Iraqis a generous 12.5% cut (and the US an 87.5% cut), were passed.

g) Finally, because it is only Americans who cannot see what is "going on on the ground" in Iraq (because it's just not safe there for civilians, because journalists have been killed by our own forces and in other ways controlled (embedded, lied to, NOT protected) by "our" military), we are left wondering "Why is it taking so long" for Iraqis to take over their own government?
Iraqis have, I would guess, absolutely no question about US intentions, merely by virtue of having observed our conduct regarding items a) through f) above.

I can imagine their thinking goes a bit like this: The US is not going to leave; why should we bestir ourselves to give away what little power we have? Why should we disembark the gravy train?
The American soldiers tell us that the "American People" will not stand for them staying here much longer. Bull. The Americans have no idea what the war is costing. They have no idea even what the death toll is--they see no flag-draped coffins and body-bags coming into Dover AFB--the military keeps it off limits; the Americans see no maimed and wounded soldiers coming home at Andrews AFB--the military keeps it off limits. They have no idea of how many mercenaries or other military hirelings are being killed. They have absolutely NO idea of how many of our own men, women and children are being killed, dispossessed, preyed upon, dislocated. And they could care less.
The Americans have no idea what's being done over here in Iraq because their own government--the executive branch, the legislative branch, the military-- lies to them, keeps them in the dark, frightens them -- terrorists, terrorists, terrorists, hate, hate, hate, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11 — whenever it suits their thinly veiled purposes (oil and Middle Eastern bases).

Americans, in fact, probably have less real freedom in their country than we have in ours, combat zone though it is. We can watch al Jazeera TV, and they can't. We can watch al-Arabiya, and they can't. Their president can break American laws whenever he wants, and no one stops him. Their president and vice president can hide any documents from their bosses (the putative "people") they want to hide. Their congress exercises absolutely no control over the president or his branch of government. The American press does nothing to report on what their government does. The American press copies down what the government says it is doing and does absolutely no more than that: the American press is a flock of sheep or herd of calves bound for slaughter, just slightly ahead of the American people. Which thought reminds every Iraqi of the Holocaust song by Tzeitlin & Secunda, popularized by Joan Baez in the 1960s: Calves are easily/bound and slaughtered/never knowing the reason why." Here's a mature Joan Baezin concert 14July07, fittingly in Abenberg, Germany.