Wha' happened?

Richard Cohen is not writing like Joe Klein's Gilligan:

From bin Laden's standpoint, this has been a glorious victory, made possible, it has to be said, by the totally unforeseen incompetence of the Bush administration. It was so intent on going to war in Iraq that it would not finish the job in Afghanistan. So, to bin Laden's absolute amazement -- I am guessing here -- the United States took on his enemy, the secular and ungodly Saddam Hussein, whom bin Laden himself would gladly have murdered. It has to be a wonderful thing when your enemy vanquishes your enemy.

On "Meet the Press" on Sunday, Dick Cheney said that if he had it to do all over again, he would still go to war in Iraq -- "we'd do exactly the same thing," he said. Why? Is the man incapable of learning from experience? We now know from umpteen reports that there was no link between bin Laden and Hussein. We now know, the Weekly Standard notwithstanding, that Mohamed Atta did not meet in Prague with someone from Iraqi intelligence. We now know that Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction and that the Iraq war -- which has cost America more than 2,500 lives, 20,000 casualties, the respect of the world and billions of dollars -- is for naught. Talleyrand said of the Bourbons that they forgot nothing and learned nothing. It will be said of Cheney that he forgot everything and learned nothing.

How did bin Laden get so lucky? How did he get so fortunate in his choice of enemies? The Bush administration not only validated his wildest dreams -- dreams that even some of his aides thought were unrealistic -- but went even further. By using torture, by the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, by employing "extraordinary renditions" of suspects to countries where they could be tortured, by insisting on going it almost alone in Iraq, by telling the international community to shove it, by declaring a war for an idée fixe -- this fierce obsession with Hussein goes back a long way -- the United States has made itself reviled in much of the world...

...I was here on Sept. 11, 2001 -- downtown when the twin towers collapsed. My instantaneous reaction -- the thought that came to my mind as I heard the sound of the buildings coming down -- was for revenge. I would, to this day, kill Osama bin Laden with my own hands. But as much as I hate the man, I have to recognize that from his vantage point, from his mountain fastness somewhere on the Pakistan-Afghanistan frontier, he has won. What he had set out to do, he has done. That is more than we can say.

He forgot to add, "Heckuva Job, Bushie".

That's even...dare I say, Krugmanesque.