Off the Bus in 2003?

A reader rightly corrects me:

I only thought to look back at your archives because I was reading your blog every day in 2002, 2003 and 2004. My sense was that you ended 2003 thinking things were tough but headed in the right direction, and soured on the war (as executed, if not in theory) in late winter/early spring of 2004. I can pinpoint the time when I went from supporting the war, to being doubtful, to wishing we’d never started it. It was the winter and early spring of 2004, when I made my first trip to Iraq.

I think there may soon be a temptation, if there isn’t one already, for ex-hawks to fight over who turned against the war too soon, who turned against it too late, who turned against it for bad reasons, etc. I think we’d be much better off putting that aside and focusing on what we can do to save lives in Iraq, and what we can do to make sure we don’t make a mistake remotely like this again in our lifetimes.

Agreed. My own doubts about force levels, expressed soon after the invasion, didn’t really morph into "getting off the bus" until the end of 2003, beginning of 2004. But you can raid the archives and see the shift for yourself.