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Hindsight can be merciless. People of any given era often look back in time and wonder how their predecessors could have been so dimwitted.

Hindsight is the historian's necessary vice.

You can't help but... with 20/20 hindsight, go back and say, 'Look, had we done something different, we probably wouldn't be facing what we are facing today.'

I would be hard-pressed to look back at anything that I have done in my career and not say, 'I would have done that a little different' because hindsight is 20/20.

The mind cannot foresee its own advance.

We do not agree that hindsight is required. The risks of internal strife in Iraq, active Iranian pursuit of its interests, regional instability, and al-Qaeda activity in Iraq, were each explicitly identified before the invasion.

You can't look forward and backward at the same time.