"Do you regret telling the president that the Iraqi people would "greet the troops with sweets and flowers? "
I regret the phrase but not the intent behind the phrase. By and large, the Iraqi people received the United States very well in the first two or three months -- before the occupation was enshrined." (I still can't believe that US journalists still interview this fellow on Iraqi affairs, when he was wrong on every assumption and on every prediction he had made. I am told that this conceited person really was expecting to emerge as a popular leader in occupied Iraq, and talked with Wolfowitz about possibly becoming president of Iraq. Notice that he can't even get himself to accept the term "American occupation" and notice that the "objective" Washington Post reporter refers to the US invasion as "liberation". And notice that his "liberal" advocate now prefers "benign dictatorship" to democratic rule because the Iraqi people haver rejected his ilk.)