Long before the most recent round of cherry-picking intelligence was the cherry picking of political science theories, particularly the “democracy-peace” genre. The theory goes that democracies are the most peace-loving because they haven’t fought among themselves since 1700, and therefore so more democracies must lead to more peace. Around the time of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, this invention of American political scientists assumed the brave new label of the “reverse domino theory.” A democratic Iraq was supposed to set off a chain reaction transforming an entire region.