Speaking at the Insurance Leadership Forum in West Virginia, Paul Bremer, the top civilian official in Iraq, said the U.S. had insufficient troops in place to fight the war:

In remarks published Tuesday, the official, L. Paul Bremer, said he arrived in Iraq on May 6, 2003 to find "horrid" looting and a very unstable situation - throwing new fuel onto the presidential campaign issue of whether the United States had sufficiently planned for the post-war situation in Iraq.

"We paid a big price for not stopping it because it established an atmosphere of lawlessness," Bremer said during an address to an insurance group in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va. The group released a summary of his remarks in Washington. "We never had enough troops on the ground," Bremer said, while insisting that he was "more convinced than ever that regime change was the right thing to do."

Whoops. The White House has no comment. And true to Administration style, today Bremer backtracks and says:

In a statement Monday night to The Washington Post, Bremer said he fully supported the Bush administration's strategy in Iraq. "I believe that we currently have sufficient troop levels in Iraq," he said in the e-mailed statement, according to Tuesday's edition of the Post. He said references to troops levels related to the situation when he first arrived in Baghdad "when I believed we needed either more coalition troops or Iraqi security forces to address the looting."

Like Rumsfeld backtracking to cover Cheney on WMDs.

Remember that old Animals' song?

I'm just a soul who's intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood

This Administration is becoming laughable. Not just in our eyes, but in the eyes of the world. The right hand doesn't have a clue what the left hand is doing. Their spin machine is working overtime. No wonder voters lined up in droves to register to vote.

See: Hesiod at Counterspin here. Left Coaster here.