"Irreversible"

Bob Woodward reports today in the Post.

Early on the morning of Nov. 13, 2006, members of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group gathered around a dark wooden conference table in the windowless Roosevelt Room of the White House.

For more than an hour, they listened to President Bush give what one panel member called a "Churchillian" vision of "victory" in Iraq and defend the country's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki. "A constitutional order is emerging," he said.

Later that morning, around the same conference table, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden painted a starkly different picture for members of the study group. Hayden said "the inability of the government to govern seems irreversible," adding that he could not "point to any milestone or checkpoint where we can turn this thing around," according to written records of his briefing and the recollections of six participants.

"The government is unable to govern," Hayden concluded. "We have spent a lot of energy and treasure creating a government that is balanced, and it cannot function."

Later in the interview, he qualified the statement somewhat: "A government that can govern, sustain and defend itself is not achievable," he said, "in the short term."

Hayden's bleak assessment, which came just a week after Republicans had lost control of Congress and Bush had dismissed Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, was a pivotal moment in the study group's intensive examination of the Iraq war, and it helped shape its conclusion in its final report that the situation in Iraq was "grave and deteriorating."

In the eight months since the interview, neither Hayden nor any other high-ranking administration official has publicly described the Iraqi government in the uniformly negative terms that the CIA director used in his closed-door briefing.

[...]

Testifying publicly before the Senate Armed Services Committee two days after meeting with the study group, Hayden was more cautious in his conclusions. He said that there were serious problems in Iraq but that the government was "functioning."

And a window into how the Bush administration "functions."

Bush was joined in the interview by Vice President Cheney, White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten and Hadley, but they did not speak. "We thought with that whole group there, we were going to get briefings, we were going to get discussions," said Perry. "Instead the president held forth on his views on how important the war was, and how it was tough."

Churchillian.

Look, no one really would expect Hayden to publicly testify that his boss's crusade is irreversibly heading towards ongoing disaster. But clearly Hayden, Hadley, and whomever else is part of this criminal enterprise have never been able to puncture the delusions of their boss is amazing.

They can throw all the Kagans in the world up against the wall to see if their arguments stick, but it's this lack of candor and willingness to allow preznit's delusions guide policy and how the war is even talked about is why support for this war dropped off the table a few months ago. Spreading more dubious claims isn't going to help at this point.

U.S. Military Calls Al-Qaeda in Iraq 'Principal Threat'

Meanwhile, the "real" al Qaeda -- the one who launched the attacks on our embassies, the USS Cole, the Pentagon, and the World Trade Center -- is stronger than it's been in years and has even greater control over its home base in the hinterlands of Afghanistan and Pakistan. That was a war we may well have been able to win, or at least seriously cripple the terrorist organization. Instead...well you know.