Max Boot addresses Paul Krugman's pile of nonsense sprinkled with random accuracy so you don't have to.
And more importantly, so I don't have to. I will stipulate that Krugman has skills in whatever narrow portion of economics that won him a Nobel Prize.
But he has no clue about much outside that area. Especially military matters.
And in politics, it isn't much better. The idea that Krugman expresses in the article that the Iraq War guaranteed Bush's reelection in 2004 defies reality. Yes, in summer 2003 Democrats were grumbling that the victory made Bush's reelection guaranteed (making a hash of their later preening that they'd predicted the insurgencies after the war).
But by fall 2004, we were deep into al Qaeda/Baathist and pro-Iranian Sadrist insurgencies, making the war anything but an electoral positive, as John Kerry's campaign should remind you.