Cognitive dissonance? Maybe not.

At first I found these two points from the Zogby poll of U.S. troops in Iraq confusing.

Point one: the war was waged in retaliation for the Sept. 11 attacks.

The wide-ranging poll also shows that 58% of those serving in country say the U.S. mission in Iraq is clear in their minds, while 42% said it is either somewhat or very unclear to them, that they have no understanding of it at all, or are unsure. While 85% said the U.S. mission is mainly Â"to retaliate for Saddam'?s role in the 9-11 attacks," 77% said they also believe the main or a major reason for the war was "to stop Saddam from protecting al Qaeda in Iraq."?

Point two: and they want a timetable for getting out.

An overwhelming majority of 72% of American troops serving in Iraq think the U.S. should exit the country within the next year, and nearly one in four say the troops should leave immediately, a new Le Moyne College/Zogby International survey shows.

My initial thought was, that's weird cognitive dissonance. They are under the sad and erronious impression that they're there to avenge the deaths of more than 3,000 people killed in 2001. So why are they in such a hurry to not finish the job?

But of course, if that is the reason under which you are fighting, then, hell, the job is done. We have retaliated for Saddam's (non-existent) role. He's been taken down. Game over.

The Cheney administration did everything they could to downplay Bush's avowed mission to remap the Middle East via gunpoint democracy. They knew the American people, naturally suspicious of grand visions of transforming the world in our image, would not be supportive of such missionary zeal using their sons' and daughters' blood and our collective treasure. So, they played up WMD and, most cynically but effectively, Saddam's supposed role in the attacks on the World Trade Center.

That's why liberals were put in such a difficult spot on this from the beginning. How could we not support the efforts to free the people of Iraq from Hussein's bloody fist? How could we be so...so...undemocratic?

It was because we knew that, for whatever dreams and faeries George W. Bush saw when he looked at the future of Iraq, we knew that Cheney and his henchmen were selling the American people on a very different vision, one of quick, brutish, misguided revenge for the pain and vulnerability we felt one beautiful late summer morning in 2001. Afghanistan just wasn't big enough. But, as usual, we were speaking as if underwater.

So now, with Iraq in tatters, on the cusp of a civil war that will likely be preceded by ethnic cleansing (and, no, I do not enjoy typing those words, despite the latest aspersions coming from the Right), Bush finds himself alone. The gang of fools and criminals who make up the worst presidential administration in my lifetime did such a good job of conflating Iraq with the 9-11 attacks that the American people and, apparently, the troops, now think our work in Iraq is done. We gave the terrorists who hurt us the black eye we itched to deliver. It's time to go. Too bad Bush's high-minded mission to change history has been left in the dust, forgotten by the very people at the point of his spear.

The Dubai Ports deal is a similar victim to the fear mongering the Cheney administration has accosted us with for the past four and a half years. Fear of outsiders, fear of the Muslim "others" who "hate us for our way of life" is what is stoking the howling on the right on this deal. And man, that's the song that the administration and its many apologists have been singing for a long time. They're now hoisted on their own petard.