Wasn't the demise of Saddam an afterthought that made it look like going over there was a good idea even though there never were WMDs?

I thought we were staying until the construction of the new embassy was completed in the green zone. Actually, I thought we were trying to get a military base built, but the truth isn't something we've gotten from the WH since January 2001.

A State like North Carolina faced with the plurality's opinion, whether it wants to comply with §2 or simply to avoid litigation, will, therefore, have no reason to create crossover districts. Section 2 recognizes no need for such districts, from which it follows that they can neither be required nor be created to help the State meet its obliga- tion of equal electoral opportunity under §2.  And if a legislature were induced to draw a crossover district by the plurality's encouragement to create them voluntarily, ante, at 20-21, it would open itself to attack by the plural- ity based on the pointed suggestion that a policy favoring crossover districts runs counter to Shaw. The plurality has thus boiled §2 down to one option: the best way to avoid suit under §2, and the only way to comply with §2, is by drawing district lines in a way that packs minority voters into majority-minority districts, probably eradicat- ing crossover districts in the process.
Perhaps the plurality recognizes this aberrant implica- tion, for it eventually attempts to disavow it.  It asserts that "§2 allows States to choose their own method of com- plying with the Voting Rights Act, and we have said that may include drawing crossover districts. . . . [But] §2 does not mandate creating or preserving crossover districts." Ante, at 19.  See also, ante, at 20 (crossover districts "can be evidence . . . of equal political opportunity . . .").  But this is judicial fiat, not legal reasoning; the plurality does not even attempt to explain how a crossover district can be a minority-opportunity district when assessing the com- pliance of a districting plan with §2, but cannot be one when sought as a remedy to a §2 violation.  The plurality cannot have it both ways. If voluntarily drawing a cross- over district brings a State into compliance with §2, then requiring creation of a crossover district must be a way to remedy a violation of §2, and eliminating a crossover district must in some cases take a State out of compliance with the statute. And when the elimination of a crossover district does cause a violation of §2, I cannot fathom why a voter in that district should not be able to bring a claim to remedy it.

In short, to the extent the plurality's holding is taken to control future results, the plurality has eliminated the protection of §2 for the districts that best vindicate the goals of the statute, and has done all it can to force the States to perpetuate racially concentrated districts, the quintessential manifestations of race consciousness in American politics.