It . . . seems clear that U.S. chances for success would have been far better than they are today were it not for the overwhelming and shocking incompetence with which the administration has managed the war. From the failure to produce a coherent postwar plan to the disastrous performance by the occupation authority that was belatedly installed, the Bush team turned a difficult mission into a near-impossible one. President Bush and his most senior aides meanwhile stubbornly refused to listen to advisers who warned of the consequences of their policies.
. . . Mistakes are inevitable in any war. But the common theme of these accounts is the triumph of ideology and arrogance over the pragmatism that is needed to recover from errors or adjust to changing conditions. Having dispatched too few troops to Iraq at the beginning of the war, Mr. Rumsfeld has perpetuated this signal failing for 3 1/2 years. Having ignored reconstruction in prewar planning, the administration then excluded the professionals who might have made the occupation authority successful.
Mr. Bush himself refused to take one of the essential steps needed to remedy the resulting mess -- replacing Mr. Rumsfeld -- despite repeatedly being advised to do so by his own chief of staff, among others. The result, as Mr. Woodward describes it, is a defense secretary who has lost the confidence of the military he directs. Even more disturbing is the portrait of a president who, with two years left in his term, seems unable to come to terms with the damaging and dangerous situation he has helped to create -- much less imagine a way out of it.
And nothing has or will change in the Bush Administration. Messrs. Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld listen to no one and learn nothing. Does WaPo really expect better results in the next 2 years? And since no sane person could, how can one support the continued sacrifice of our troops in this Debacle? How can we justify the deaths and damage?
WaPo fails to deal with reality. In their own way, they are as bad as Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld.
