A few weeks back, William F. Buckley declared: "If I knew then what I know now about what kind of situation we would be in, I would have opposed the war." I've been waiting for him to expand on this, and he did so today--sort of.

"Should We Have Gone to War?" Buckley's current column asks. After reading the piece, I still find myself wanting its author's answer. The National Review founder writes: "Reason fortifies the two positions: 1) that we should have gone to war, and 2) that we need not have gone to war." Come again?

On Hardball Tuesday night, Buckley was a little more direct--as those appearing opposite Chris Matthews often are. He remarked that Bush's Iraq venture suffered from "strategic malconsideration," and that the White House "overreached" in its attempts to establish democracy in Iraq. Acknowledging that deposing Hussein was a positive consequence of the invasion, Buckley conceded that "viewed retrospectively [Bush] should have tried something else."