Concise Statement Of The Failures Of The Bush Administration In Iraq

George Friedman of Stratfor.com, a private intelligence firm, as quoted by Andrew Sullivan:

The problem the Bush administration has - and it is a problem that dates back to the beginning of the war - is its inability to articulate the reality. The United States is not staying the course. It has not been on course - if by "course" you mean what was planned in February 2003 - for two years. The course the United States has been on has been winding, shifting and surprising. The fact is that the administration has done a fairly good job of riding the whirlwind. But the course has shifted so many times that no one can stay it, because it disappeared long ago.

Having committed the fundamental error - and that wasn't WMD [it was not forseeing and then misreading the insurgency] - the Administration has done a sufficiently good job that some sort of working government might well be created in Iraq in 2006, and U.S. forces will certainly be withdrawn. What threatens this outcome is the administration's singular inability to simply state the obvious. As a result, the Democrats - doing what opposition parties do - has made it appear that the Bush administration is the most stupid, inept and incompetent administration in history. And the administration has been reduced to calling its critics cowards.

The entire article is available on the Statfor.com site, but requires registration for a 7 day guest pass.