How else does one explain the lack of curiosity in the U.S. about the Lord Hutton inquiry, which was appointed to investigate the apparent suicide of the weapons analyst who had warned about Tony Blair's dodgy WMD dossier?
The fact that we honestly believe we fought a different war might help explain why, unlike our British friends, we don't need evidence of WMD to know they were there. Or why ongoing acts of terror in Iraq, such as those at the United Nations' headquarters and the mosque in Najaf, are treated by this president as conclusive evidence of the connection between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein.
Jokes aside, the penny must eventually drop: If Tony Blair had a "sexed-up" WMD dossier, we have the blueprints; if the folks in Britain are ruffled about being led into an unnecessary war, Americans ought to be enraged.
All the more so considering Mr. Bush's latest address to the nation, in which he spoke of more sacrifice (not his own) and promised to "do what is necessary ... spend what is necessary to achieve" his ends.
Clearly, the Iraq quagmire and its ever-mutating justifications show that George W. Bush remains oblivious to a basic principle of his own conservative ideology: Top-down central planning � economic or political � is doomed to fail.
The president's overheated rhetoric about the Middle East becoming a place of "progress and peace"; his prophetic visions of "tyrants falling and resentment giving way to hope, as men and women in every culture reject the ideologies of terror, and turn to the pursuits of peace" � this is the political equivalent of speaking in tongues. At best, it's ahistoric. Yet the American people are lapping it up.
The kind of faith Americans seem to have in the ruling crusts has dulled the outcry at the president's $87-billion "emergency-funding request" to compensate for the adventures in "Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere" through next year, an amount greater than the world gives annually in foreign aid for all countries.
Initially, the Bush administration had pegged the war at $65 billion, total. Recall, Iraqi oil revenues were going to pay for this unconstitutional exercise. Like other little pesky details (the missing WMD come to mind), the administration has neglected to mention that, because of the ongoing sabotage and erratic power supply (courtesy of the invaders), oil revenue will barely reach $7 billion.
The war in Iraq, destined to be shouldered entirely by the American people, is costing roughly $5 billion a month. Spending levels across the board are approximately 22 percent higher than when Bill Clinton left office, and this so-called conservative president has yet to veto one spending bill. We now have an estimated deficit of $500 billion (without war costs).
This means we're into Keynesian deficit spending � the government is borrowing and inflating the money supply to fund its profligacy, a practice that will accelerate the depreciation of the dollar, and may even lead to the horror of hyperinflation. While Mr. Bush was making a commotion about returning plunder to the people in the form of a tax cut, he was focused just as keenly on increasing the ceiling on a whopping $6.8 trillion national debt.
At a time when there is an army of 9 million unemployed Americans (and these are officially finessed figures), Americans are expected to place a couple of countries on the payroll. A large portion of the new budget will go toward funding expensive and expansive bureaucracies. The New York Times reported that the civilian side of the occupation is expected to cost $30 billion over the next year. Once ensconced, these fiefdoms become self-perpetuating, interminable and parasitical, forming a permanent drain on the private economy and the American taxpayer.
The warfare state is more costly than the welfare state, and just as intractable.
The truth is, we are bogged down in Iraq. The 140,000 troops now on the ground are going nowhere. There are only 21,000 non-American troops; at most, we can expect an additional 15,000 more by next year. Meanwhile, 290 Americans are dead. This includes the 156 who've died since the president declared victory. Nobody in office is willing to render the Iraqi death count.
The truth is the U.S. is desperate. Yet it continues to conduct itself with insolence, prompting one senior Western envoy to ponder "whether the world is ready to pick the United States up off the floor and dust [it] off."
For those of us who believe the lessons lie in rejecting what the U.S. has become, and reviving the legacy of this great nation's founders, there's no better time to quote the memorable but oh-so-ironic 1821 words of secretary of state John Quincy Adams: "America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher of the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own."
Mr. Bush's "bring 'em on" bravado has been a disaster. The time has come for some bring-'em-home humility.