To set the stage, read this editorial, published in Sept. 2002, just months before the ill-fated war began.

Janis listed these as basic groupthink symptoms:

a.. illusions of invulnerability leading to the taking of extreme risks;

b.. collective efforts to rationalize, leading decision-makers to discount warnings that might otherwise force them to reconsider;

c.. stereotyped views of enemy leaders as too evil to warrant genuine attempts to negotiate, and as too weak or stupid to counter an attack against them, leading to miscalculations;

d.. an unquestioned belief in the group's inherent morality, inclining group members to ignore the ethical or moral consequences of their decisions;

e.. advocates of the consensus view, putting pressure on those who express strong arguments against any of the group's commitments, making clear that dissent is contrary to what is expected of all loyal members;

f.. self-appointed mind guards emerging to protect the group from advice, information and views that might shatter the shared complacency about the effectiveness or morality of their decisions;

g.. self-censorship by people with views deviating from the apparent group consensus, creating an illusion of unanimity within the group.

After reading Suskind's book on Paul O'Niell's tenure as Treasury Secretary, The Price of Loyalty, I've become more convinced than ever that these groupthink symptoms characterize the Bu$hCo inner-circle, and very much characterized their approach to Iraq. Like O'Niell, I tend to view the process used in complex decision-making to be integral to the ultimate outcome. While a poor process may not guarantee disaster, it sure makes disaster (or short of that, a less-than-optimal outcome) more likely. One key to making sound decisions is to have as much relevant information as possible, and to include enough people representing a variety of perspectives to hash out that information and that information's implications. While that process may be a bit more time-consuming, and a bit more uncomfortable for all players involved (debate challenging one's pet assumptions can have that tendency), the resulting decision will be one that is empirically-driven as opposed to ideologically-driven. To me that distinction is critical. The former type of decision is likely to be one in which the players on the group have compromised and in which they have charted out a careful, cautious course of action. The latter type of decision, driven by ideology, is likely to be more extreme and more risky. The players are likely to be more confident in their outcome, although their confidence is likely more delusional.

So what happened a year ago? We saw an ideologically-driven decision put into play. The closest thing that Bu$hCo had to a genuine dissident, Colin Powell, probably engaged in a great deal of self-censorship (which has hurt his credibility in the war's aftermath), the group's mind guards (Cheney? Rove? Rumsfield?) have filtered out information contradictory to their pre-ordained conclusions, in which they have framed themselves as the forces of "good" and Hussein as "evil, stupid, and corrupt", in which they were extremely confident in the end result of their plan (the Iraqis would throw flowers to US soldiers; we'd be in and out in 60 days; ad nauseum), and in which dissidents were portrayed as disloyal, and in which the group discounted the warning signs that their plan would not go as planned.

What happened? Over 570 dead troops and thousands of injured troops along with the countless Iraqi civilians who've been killed and injured later, there's nothing tangible to show for the war and occupation. The WMDs are not to be found, and what we've read and heard from the intelligence community indicates that the scope of any WMD programs or actual WMDs was actually quite in doubt. Not only that, but any link between Hussein and terrorist groups has proven to be quite spurious (again as I understand it, that's something that the intelligence types were aware of, and which was roundly discounted by BU$hCo). The situation in Iraq is far from stable, contrary to last spring's hype. Certainly there have been some improvements, although much of those improvements have been limited to a small extremely affluent sub-set of Iraqis. Dissidents - both within the US and among the international community - rather than eat crow have instead been vindicated. The fall-out continues. Bu$hCo allies in Germany, Spain, and South Korea have been dealt set-backs and dissenters have seen their political fortunes rise. The US has become increasingly isolated in the international community. We're even seeing cracks in the once unified front at Bu$hCo, as the miserable failure in Iraq has become increasingly obvious, and those left trying to toe the line become self-parodies.

Those who marched on the streets of major cities worldwide, who voiced our dissent with our bodies, words, prayers, and so forth, can take some cold comfort in knowing that we were indeed right to call on Bush and Blair to stop the madness and let the UN weapons inspectors complete their work. I say cold comfort because the loss of life, limb and treasure has been entirely unacceptable.

The Iraq war will go down in history among other groupthink policy disasters: The Bay of Pigs (Kennedy), the escalation of the Vietnam War in the mid-1960s (Johnson), along with failures to read correctly the intelligence data regarding Japan (FDR) and potential Chinese involvement in the Korean war (Truman).

I'll have more to say on how to handle complex decisions, such as the ones comprising foreign policy, later. Suffice it to say, the short answer is this: look at the process used by Bu$hCo, and do the opposite.