So, in order to improve efficiencies, we live in a representative democracy. We must trust those we elect to hire equally trustworthy experts, who must focus on their little areas, then advise the executive, who must be wise enough to figure out what the experts are talking about, and then communicate to the public why any particular action is being taken.

Where our knowledge must absolutely be "up to the task" is not on the intricacies of any particular issue, but on whether and how our leaders are doing their jobs. Some of this does indeed require a modicum of knowledge and curiosity about important issues and the sensibilities to figure out what various outcomes might be. Even this requires a fair amount of discipline, but not nearly what Chris is asking for. But it's beyond what most of our fat, dumb and happy public are willing to do these days.

Going back to the main point --- a good decision on Iraq at this point really requires that someone or a small group of people know all the information requested in the diary entry, and must be equally adept at coming up with related policy. And we have to trust our leaders (and also independent sources) to do so. Thus I wrote the short description of what I think is important in a leader.

Unfortunately, finding out whether our leaders are doing their jobs is more difficult than ever, as our major news sources merge into a few conglomerates and our leaders become more secretive. Deregulation of the media is one of the worst things Clinton ever agreed to. Bush actively making the government less and less transparent is criminal. The Internet is a godsend, and probably the only reason there is anyone standing up to Bush at this point.

I guess what it comes down to is, yeah, I don't know all that stuff about Iraq, or even half of it. I never pretended to (like certain administration officials). On the other hand I have never offered an opinion here about what we need to do in Iraq (except I was pretty damn sure we shouldn't have gone in). But fortunately I have been diligent enough to figure out that our leaders have betrayed our trust, are constantly hiding from us, and are selling us out. Iraq is merely a symptom of that --- one of many.