Because the neoconservatives had a pollyannaish outlook and thought that Muslims were all pissed off because they didn't have a democratic outlet, and that a free Middle East would naturally be more moderate and liberal and therefore friendly to the US. Or at least the radicals would expend their energy in the political process instead of bombing things. I'd imagine the Arab Spring has disabused them of such stupidity, but they believed it at the time.

Why Iraq? Saddam was probably the most convenient dictator to bump off. He had been sufficiently vilified over the years, he was legitimately in violation of a number of UN resolutions, and the original Gulf War was remarkably popular. I can't think of an easier Arab country to whip up a war against. Saudi Arabia is more problematic for a lot of reasons. For one, do you really think they wanted to militarily occupy the home of Mecca?

Why not 40 years ago? It wasn't the same people in charge 40 years ago, obviously.

Your faith in their wisdom is cute, but if they knew perfectly well what they were doing then why did it all blow up in their faces so badly?

There's something very fishy about these recent Syria chemical weapons claims.

Assad knows better than anyone else that using chemical weapons is the one thing Obama clearly defined as a "red line". And yet, just three days after official UN chemical inspectors arrived in Syria,he has nothing better to do than to kill hundreds of people using chemical weapons?

Assad isn't stupid, why on earth should he do something like this, right now, when chemical weapon inspectors have just arrived?

There were earlier reports about chemical weapons being used in Syria, and it turned out that it was probably the rebels who used them. So there's a good chance that it was actually the rebels who ordered the use the chemical weapons in this recent incident. They clearly have stronger motives.

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

Politicians, at least in my country, are often genuinely stupid because they are a bunch of intellectual inbreds who all attend the same schools, talk exclusively to people who agree with them about everything, and never do anything of actual merit before landing in elected office. They live perfectly insular lives and never have any idea of what kind of chaos they've wrought because they don't experience the consequences of their actions. Such a person could hardly end up any other way than stupid. Or, more precisely, ignorant, because their natural intelligence isn't being questioned here.

Because they probably got results they wanted?

I found it funny that US citizens actually believed the lies the US government was spewing. I easily saw the drum beat to war. The most funny thing (really isn't too much funny things about the whole fucked up situation) was that we gave Iraq WMDs or at the very least allowed the use during the 80s to fight Iran.

And here I thought you were arguing that they weren't stupid.

You have to understand that forty years ago we were still in the Cold War era . The neoconservative priority was to oppose the USSR at every turn and not necessarily to promote democracy. After the Cold War, the neocons fell prey to inevitablist delusions that liberal democracy had won the day and was the answer to everything. See: Fukuyama's End of History.

The main characterisitc of a (proper) political power -- inheritance, inheritance of common interests, goals regardless of everchanging monarchs, rulers or adminstration. I could easily believe (actually I know it) that your (public) politicians are stupid, but in theory of elites, political elites are never defined by certain stupid politicians and their actions.

I've actually read it ;)

Well then, you should know how neocons thought at the time. Nowadays you can find Fukuyama running like hell from his own ideas.

The elite are as prone to parochialism as anyone. And the naturally intelligent are probably more prone to believing foolish things than the less intelligent. The dullard tends to believe only in what he sees, while the intelligent often get carried away by their own fantastic imaginations. It doesn't help matters that if you grow up being told all the time how bright and smart you are, you can easily become convinced of your own intellectual superiority and are thus rendered unteachable.

We found WMDs in Iraq so what rumour?