And Over There

Maybe one day I'll get over the fact that all of the Very Serious People thought doing this was a wonderful idea, and very few have any of it weighing on their consciences or have suffered any career harm because of it.

As many as 2 million Iraqis — nearly 6 percent of the country's estimated more than 31 million population — are thought to have been forced from the cities and towns where they once lived and are housed in circumstances that feel temporary and makeshift.

More than 500,000 of those are "squatters in slum areas with no assistance or legal right to the properties they occupy," according to Refugees International, a Washington-based advocacy group. Most can't go home: Either their homes have been destroyed or hostile ethnic and sectarian groups now control their neighborhoods.

We'll never really acknowledge the hell we unleashed.