Hey, we all make mistakes. Some people lose their wallet, some people leave the coffee maker on all day, and some people start a war that they can't get out of.

Pouring more gasoline on the fire, President Bush last night said he will send 20,000 more troops to babysit Iraq. Every story has a hidden story. One of my favorite hidden stories of the Iraq war is Bush's desire as presidential candidate to have a war to call his own. This is not a new story, but it gains new importance each time Bush tries to dig himself out of the mudslide.

When Bush decided to run for president in 1999 or so, he had no serious governmental experience. He was elected governor of Texas in 1994 and got re-elected a few years later, but at some point he decided he wanted to be president. His father (former President George H.W. Bush) hooked George W. up with policy experts to guide his world views. At the time, W. had no world views. In Bob Woodward's recent book, "State of Denial," we read that George W. openly admitted to these advisors at the time that he had no world view and didn't know where to start.

In its review of State of Denial, Salon.com reported last year:

"State of Denial" begins in 2000, with George H.W. Bush fretful about George W. Bush's utter ignorance of foreign policy, and the elder Bush's securing Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, a longtime friend and ally of the former president's, as tutor. "Bandar," Woodward reports George W. Bush saying at an early encounter, "I guess you're the best asshole who knows about the world. Explain to me one thing ... Why should I care about North Korea?"

One thing that George W. did know was that war is good for a president's image. So when Bush sat down with a ghostwriter for his campaign autobiography, "A Charge to Keep," he candidly talked about the utility of war.

"He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999," said author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz. "It was on his mind. He said to me: 'One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.' And he said, 'My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.' He said, 'If I have a chance to invade, if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency." Herskowitz said that Bush expressed frustration at a lifetime as an underachiever in the shadow of an accomplished father. In aggressive military action, he saw the opportunity to emerge from his father's shadow. The moment, Herskowitz said, came in the wake of the September 11 attacks. "Suddenly, he's at 91 percent in the polls, and he'd barely crawled out of the bunker."

Herskowitz's claims have an air of credibility. He was loyal to the Bush family, having been hired to write the puffy campaign book that bore George W.'s name. But Herskowitz's puffwork was not good enough, and he was replaced, like some many people in the Bush administration who asked too many questions. The following passage is a real eye-opener:

According to Herskowitz, George W. Bush's beliefs on Iraq were based in part on a notion dating back to the Reagan White House - ascribed in part to now-vice president Dick Cheney, Chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee under Reagan. "Start a small war. Pick a country where there is justification you can jump on, go ahead and invade."

Bush's circle of pre-election advisers had a fixation on the political capital that British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher collected from the Falklands War. Said Herskowitz: "They were just absolutely blown away, just enthralled by the scenes of the troops coming back, of the boats, people throwing flowers at [Thatcher] and her getting these standing ovations in Parliament and making these magnificent speeches."

Republicans, Herskowitz said, felt that Jimmy Carter's political downfall could be attributed largely to his failure to wage a war. He noted that President Reagan and President Bush's father himself had (besides the narrowly-focused Gulf War I) successfully waged limited wars against tiny opponents - Grenada and Panama - and gained politically. But there were successful small wars, and then there were quagmires, and apparently George H.W. Bush and his son did not see eye to eye.