Even so, his friend the journalist Malcolm Muggeridge would conclude that “he was at heart strongly anti-Semitic.” At - Thomas E. Ricks

Enlightened types tended to place their faith in progress, freedom, and the improvability of mankind. As the intellectual historian Caroline Winterer put it, “To be enlightened was to be filled with hope.”54 The opposite of enlightenment, states her predecessor Carl Becker, was “superstition, intolerance, tyranny.”55

foremost with President Bush himself, but his incompetence and arrogance are only part of the story. It takes more than one person to make a mess as big as Iraq. That is, Bush could only take such a careless action because of a series of failures in the American system. Major lapses occurred within the national security bureaucracy, from a weak National Security Council (NSC) to an overweening Pentagon and a confused intelligence apparatus. Larger failures of oversight also occurred in the political system, most notably in Congress, and in the inability of the media to find and present alternate sources of information about Iraq and the threat it did or didn’t present

Indeed, after the war, German commanders being debriefed confirmed that they had been ordered to stop about eight miles outside Dunkirk. “My tanks were kept halted there for three days,” said Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt. “If I had had my way the English would not have got off so lightly. But my hands were tied by direct orders from Hitler himself.” When one of Rundstedt’s subordinate generals told Hitler in a small meeting that he did not understand why such an order was issued, Hitler replied that “his aim was to make peace with Britain on a basis that she would regard as compatible with her honour to accept.” However,