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The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Jay Bookman has an interesting look at how the pre-invasion promises have held up now that major combat operations have ended.

What about the 90-day occupation?

Last February, with invasion just weeks away, sources in the Bush administration told Newsweek that they were expecting a postwar occupation of Iraq of 30 to 90 days.



“Every day you get past three months, you’ve got to expect peacekeepers to have a bull’s-eye on their head,” the sources explained.



Even at the time, a spokesman for Defense Undersecretary Douglas Feith suggested that three months might be too optimistic. It was probably wiser to think five or six months on the outside, Lt. Col. Michael Humm said.



At the time, Pentagon officials also claimed that Iraq’s oil wealth would make it unnecessary to ask other countries for financial help with reconstruction. “I don’t see the need for panhandling like that,” the Pentagon source said.

Gosh, you mean no one told the Bush administration that this wouldn’t be a cakewalk?

Not exactly. In fact, plenty of experts warned that the invasion of Iraq was not an objective to be undertaken lightly. The Center for Strategic and International Studies, to cite just one prescient example, even issued a warning. Among other things, it advised:

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• That Iraqi oil proceeds could not begin to cover reconstruction costs.

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• That the Iraqi army had an important role to play in the post-conflict.

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• That international support would be required.

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• That post-conflict security needs should not be underestimated.

It also estimated the cost of rebuilding Iraq at $100 billion, a figure that we are now learning was actually too low. There doesn’t seem to be an upper limit to the amount of money Iraq is likely to suck out of our national treasury, but the highest estimate I have seen so far suggests that it could be as high as $245 billion. And that’s just for the cost of rebuilding Iraq, not the occupation. (Indeed, the full cost of this adventure might push the deficit as high as $525 billion.)

It is also now widely accepted that the original justification of the imminent threat of attack by WMDs is now totally relegated to the dustbin of history.

So, the Bush team was wrong about WMDs, wrong about Hussein’s links to al-Qaida, wrong about the ease of securing the peace in Iraq, wrong about how much it would cost, and wrong about the need for international support. After several vacillating reasons for this war, Bush now seems determined to recast it as “the central front” in the war on terror. Given his multiple failures to perceive the obvious and a ever-lengthening list of failed justifications, we’re now supposed to trust this guy to discern the True Purpose our troops are serving in Iraq?

Given how awfully bad many of these things seem, it’s not hard to agree with Bookman’s conclusion: “[T]hese guys ought to be fired.”

Reality, however, is merely an inconvenience for this administration, and it seems highly unlikely to me that any member of the White House cabal will be let go because of these things. (Not even Rumsfeld, although he is certainly among the most culpable.) Our administration, once charged to run on a campaign theme of “Are you safer now than you were four years ago?”, now seems to absolve itself of responsibility for anything it does—or fails to do.

Meanwhile, back at home, we see that our own shores are no safer now than they were after September 11th.

Government’s Hobbled Giant

Homeland Security Is Struggling

Six months after it was established to protect the nation from terrorism, the Department of Homeland Security is hobbled by money woes, disorganization, turf battles and unsteady support from the White House, and has made only halting progress toward its goals, according to administration officials and independent experts.

[The emphasis added is mine.]

I sincerely hope that Bush is able to make something resembling success out of this mess, because I’d hate to think of what might happen if his reckless foreign policy endangered our country any further.

In order to bring these problems to a sensible conclusion, I suggest that a presidential attitude adjustment is in order. If Bush thought that America could go it alone before, his actions have now shown that it is not true. Bush needs to replace hubris with humility. He needs to go back to the U.N. with an apologetic tone, not an sanctimonious one. (If necessary, he should put his entire staff on a strict diet of French toast, Belgian chocolate, sauerkraut, and borscht until they develop an appreciation for the allies we’ve snubbed to get this war started.) If he’s going to ask the rest of the world to shed blood and fork over treasure for a war that it didn’t want, he can admit that it was wrong to deride them so. He should also relinquish a significant amount of control to the U.N., in order to make his proposal more palatable to those who opposed the invasion.

Then, once the U.N. has committed to helping lift Iraq out of the mess that George has made, once we’ve got our own security safeguards in place at home, we should all collectively fire the Bush administration on November 2nd, 2004.