It's the "I didn't do it" guy

Tom Friedman in the New York Times (subs. req'd) --

On Feb. 12, 2003, before the war, I wrote a column offering what I called my ''pottery store'' rule for Iraq: ''You break it, you own it.'' It was not an argument against the war, but rather a cautionary note about the need to do it with allies, because transforming Iraq would be such a huge undertaking. (Colin Powell later picked up on this and used the phrase to try to get President Bush to act with more caution, but Mr. Bush did not heed Mr. Powell's advice.)

But my Pottery Barn rule was wrong, because Iraq was already pretty broken before we got there -- broken, it seems, by 1,000 years of Arab-Muslim authoritarianism, three brutal decades of Sunni Baathist rule, and a crippling decade of U.N. sanctions. It was held together only by Saddam's iron fist.

His "Pottery Barn" rule was also wrong (and by the way, note his legerdemain between "pottery store" and "Pottery Barn") because it's not the Pottery Barn rule.