Paul Krugmen's got the cold water today

The New York Times (on the web at least) has an article in which Giuliani lauds Bush's "leadership" (without the quote marks). Without a hint of intended irony, though, Bush's comments on his not being able to win the "war on terror" are below.

But for the real shocker, Paul Krugman's column is a must read today.

Last month a Knight-Ridder report suggested that U.S. forces were effectively ceding many urban areas to insurgents. Last Sunday The Times confirmed that while the world's attention was focused on Najaf, western Iraq fell firmly under rebel control. Representatives of the U.S.-installed government have been intimidated, assassinated or executed.

Other towns, like Samarra, have also fallen to insurgents. Attacks on oil pipelines are proliferating. And we're still playing whack-a-mole with Moktada al-Sadr: his Mahdi Army has left Najaf, but remains in control of Sadr City, with its two million people. The Christian Science Monitor reports that "interviews in Baghdad suggest that Sadr is walking away from the standoff with a widening base and supporters who are more militant than before."

For a long time, anyone suggesting analogies with Vietnam was ridiculed. But Iraq optimists have, by my count, already declared victory three times. First there was "Mission Accomplished" - followed by an escalating insurgency. Then there was the capture of Saddam - followed by April's bloody uprising. Finally there was the furtive transfer of formal sovereignty to Ayad Allawi, with implausible claims that this showed progress - a fantasy exploded by the guns of August.

Now, serious security analysts have begun to admit that the goal of a democratic, pro-American Iraq has receded out of reach. Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies - no peacenik - writes that "there is little prospect for peace and stability in Iraq before late 2005, if then."

Krugman goes on to suggest that maybe, just maybe, it's time to stop trying to put in a puppet goverment in places like this.

That'd be a problem, though, because we still have the Pakistan and Saudi Arabian "allies" (not to mention our "great friend" Israel) to deal with.

But Krugman lays bare the utter nonsense that the neocons have been spewing.

Iraq has been, to bring back a Vietnam era phrase, a clusterfuck. Not a mission to bring peace and democracy to the Iraqis, not a mission to rid the world of an evil tyrant, but a clusterfuck.