Smart is not wise, but ignorant can be stupid.

If you decide to jump from a third-story building, expecting to fly, you're stupid. Science tells you that you're going to land in a lump, probably injured, maybe dead. But what if you thought you'd crafted wings that would let you do the same? You would still be sort of stupid, but mainly you would be ignorant -- of the basic rules of aerodynamics -- which should have told you that you were too heavy to make that flight. Being ignorant is not always the same as being stupid, but ignorance can make you do stupid things.

You can be smart (grasping the concepts) but ignorant (not possessing the facts), or you can be any combination of the above. For instance, you can be someone in charge of our nation's foreign policy but not knowing all the facts. That ignorance can lead you to make really stuid decisions that results in lots of needless deaths of young men who weren't you and who likely weren't yours.

That's what happened in Viet Nam. No one can accuse Lyndon Johnson or Robert McNamara of being stupid. They were very smart men. But they kept sending young men into a war they knew was lost. They are personally responsible for a good many of my friends being killed. LBJ refused to run for office again because of it; his Defense Secretary, McNamara, took decades to admit his mistake. They were both smart men who either didn't understand the data they were receiving -- that we were losing the war -- or chose to ignore it. In any event, it resulted in more than 58,000 young men being killed in a losing cause.

I think they chose to ignore it, which brings up the question of hubris: thinking that you know more than anyone else. Arrogance. I'm right no matter the facts!

So here's the way it works -- tragically. Smart men who are ignorant of the facts make stupid decisions. When they are finally made aware of the facts, but choose to ignore them, then they are not just stupid but arrogant. And, in the end, arrogance is the worst sin of all in a leader. Arrogance is the real killer.

The same is true in Iraq, where we sent troops with scant evidence that their leader meant any harm to our country. Three thousand young men and women have been killed over there, not to mention many thousands more coming home with crippling injuries. We didn't need to fight that particular war -- we started it, for the record -- and I place all the guilt for those deaths and the disfiguring injuries squarely on the doorstep of President Bush down there in Texas and his Vice President Mr. Cheney and his Department of Defense Secretary Mr. Rumsfeld. Shame on all of them! I don't care if you're a Republican or a Democrat: they ought to be held to account.

Excuse me, Mr. Rumsfeld or Mr. Cheney: how about you give up a foot or two or both arms or part of your brain -- not to mention the pain and trauma -- and try to go back to living life as usual? How about you, Mr. Bush? Try transversing your south Texas property on some kind of vehicle that only moves because you're breathing into it with a straw, having lost all use of your limbs? Give that a try, okay?

And then tell me that you did right by sending all those young men and women into a war you started and that didn't need to be fought.

Wise is not smart. You were smart but not wise. You were ignorant -- you didn't have all the facts. In the end, that made you stupid.

But arrogance trumps all: you thought you knew better than anyone else, but you didn't.

History will decide. My mind's already made up.