Credit where credit is due

I consider myself an original thinker about matters political, and I surely have spent much time on the subject of Iraq and Bush and cabals and the like. But this piece in Newsweek online, at the tail end, provides an insight I've missed. After all is said and done, with all the latest revelations and admissions by Bush/Rumsfeld, the only remaining reason for invading Iraq was to show the world, and the Middle East in particular, that we were not to be messed with; to display our might after the attack on our nation by lesser powers. And that proof--that we are invincible, indominable--is about to evaporate when Bush returns tomorrow to the UN, hat in hand, tail between legs, and asks our "allies" to help us with the war we cannot win alone.
So--that leaves us, after billions of dollars and thousands of lives, with a net zero. Indeed, some might say, with a net loss of those millions and thousands.
And with Saddam in hiding and Osama still on the loose, plotting.