"Coalition of the Clueless"

I'll begin with Bob Herbert (sent by a friend--maybe TruthOut will post it as well in a few days):

Dick Cheney is simultaneously running from questions about his role in the Valerie Wilson affair and fighting like mad to block any measure that would outlaw torture by the C.I.A. His former top aide, Scooter Libby, one of the original Iraq war zealots, is now an accused felon who is seldom seen in public unaccompanied by defense counsel.

Donald Rumsfeld, the high-strutting, high-profile defense secretary who was supposed to win this war in a walk, is suddenly on the down-low. There are people in the witness protection program who are easier to find than Rummy.

As for the president, he went all the way to South America to get away from the Washington heat. But even within the luxurious confines of Air Force One, Mr. Bush found that he couldn't escape the increasingly corrosive effect of the fiascos plaguing his administration...

The fact that Mr. Bush is struggling in his own political purgatory (for the sin of incompetence) is bad news for the soldiers in Iraq, where the suffering and dying continues unabated. The administration that was so anxious to throw scores of thousands of healthy young Americans into the flames of war now has no idea how to get them out.

Troops are being sent into Iraq for two, three, even four combat tours by an administration in which clowns like Scooter Libby and Karl Rove were playing games with the identity of a C.I.A. agent, and the vice president has been obsessed with his twisted protect-the-torturers campaign.

Now the Bush crew, which should be focused like a laser on what to do about the war, is consumed with damage control - pumping up the poll numbers, defending its handling of prewar intelligence, fending off further indictments and staying out of prison.

The war? There's no plan for the war. The architects of this war had no idea what they were getting into, and they are just as clueless now. The war just goes on and on, which is not just tragic - it's criminal.

So we can add yet another sin--incompetence--to the seven deadly ones Juan Cole pointed out, and the administration's just plain sick obsession with torture (noted around blogistan today).

As for the, um, war plan, or lack thereof, the Brits noticed too, and let Tony Blair know being Bush's bitch was a legacy-defining moment, but not a legacy-enhancing one:

Tony Blair repeatedly passed up opportunities to put a brake on the rush to war in Iraq, a failure that may have contributed to the country's present anarchy, according to Sir Christopher Meyer, Britain's ambassador to Washington at the time, in his book DC Confidential, serialised in the Guardian from today...

Sir Christopher, highly critical of Mr Blair's performance in the run-up to the war, argues the prime minister and his team were "seduced" by the proximity and glamour of US power and reluctant to negotiate conditions with George Bush for Britain's support for the war.

He says Mr Blair failed to exploit his enormous leverage with Mr Bush not only to secure a precious delay but to plan for postwar Iraq. "We may have been the junior partner in the enterprise but the ace up our sleeve was that America did not want to go it alone. Had Britain so insisted, Iraq after Saddam might have avoided the violence that may yet prove fatal to the entire enterprise."

But Mr Blair did not have any appetite for bargaining with Mr Bush, according to Sir Christopher: "Tony Blair chose to take his stand against Saddam and alongside President Bush from the highest of high moral ground. It is the definitive riposte to Blair the Poodle, seduced though he and his team always appeared to be by the proximity and glamour of American power...

The former diplomat accuses Mr Blair of weakness in failing to engage Mr Bush in the "plain-speaking conversation" that needed to take place. "Had Blair told Bush in clear and explicit terms that he would be unable to support a war unless British wishes were met? I doubted it."

The Washington embassy repeatedly advised Downing Street to use its leverage, but was ignored.

Delaying the invasion from March to the autumn would have allowed the United Nations weapons inspectors extra months to establish whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, enabled the US and Britain to reach an understanding with France and Russia, two of the biggest sceptics about war, and increased international support, instead of going to war "in the company of a motley ad hoc coalition of allies".

The former diplomat, who enjoyed unparalleled access to all the key members of Mr Bush's administration and supported the war, provides the most detailed account yet of the thinking inside the White House and Downing Street in the 18 months running up to the invasion in March 2003. He says of the war now: "History's verdict looks likely to be that it was terminally flawed both in conception and execution."

Publication comes at a time when Mr Blair is vulnerable domestically, and the indictment of Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the chief of staff of Vice-President Dick Cheney, has reopened the debate in the US about why the country went to war.

Sir Christopher records a conversation with Mr Libby who told him "we were the only ally that mattered. That was a powerful lever". But the former ambassador says London "was not fertile ground for the notion of leverage or the tough negotiating position that must sometimes be taken even with the closest allies - as Churchill did with Roosevelt and Thatcher did with Reagan"...

The former ambassador says a delay from March to autumn 2003 could have made a significant difference: "Even if the most optimistic predictions are finally realised for Iraq, the question will still be asked: why did the Americans and British make it so hard for themselves and even harder for Iraqis? The US and the UK would have stood a better chance of going to war in good order, and of doing the aftermath right, had they planned on an autumn, not a spring, campaign."

But the coalition of the clueless couldn't stand to be delayed. Hell, I don't know about y'all, but watching the foot stamping by Team Bush, the various neocons, and their fellow travelers aching for a war (to be fought by the reeks and wrecks, of course)...was enlightening for me, and also not in a good way--war sold as the ultimate temper tantrum of a child.

Finally, for some perspective in the country itself, Riverbend cuts through all the bullshit and tells us, in so many words, what Bush accomplished:

Congratulations Americans- not only are the hardliner Iranian clerics running the show in Iran- they are also running the show in Iraq. This shift of power should have been obvious to the world when My-Loyalty-to-the-Highest-Bidder-Chalabi sold his allegiance to Iran last year. American and British sons and daughters and husbands and wives are dying so that this coming December, Iraqis can go out and vote for Iran influenced clerics to knock us back a good four hundred years.

I guess the neocons call that "making progress."