joining me now msnbc political analyst, michael steele. former white house press secretary, robert gibbs. michael, let me start with you. this is a nontrolling question. among -- i was looking at some polling data on this today. among sort of the professional political class of republicans, the consultant class, is it a generally accepted idea that even knowing what we know now, the iraq war was not a mistake? is that like -- i just wonder how prevalent that attitude is. >> i don't think it's as prevalent as a lot of people pretend it is. i think that there has been for quite some time a very strong undercurrent. yes, spoken in hushed terms, because people don't want to deal with the noise of disagreeing with those who think that we should have been all hell and fire and brimstone going into iraq who don't think that was a sane policy in the end. i think laura ingram framed it exactly right. as conservatives, you do learn