Winning The Peace -- How Bush Screwed Up

Hey, the liberal media is finally waking up. Another lengthy, damning, fascinating article in the New York Times details the cocky, short-term thinking of the Bushies and how they failed to win the peace in Iraq.

I love the description of Gen. Tommy Franks in Baghdad just after it fell. Sure, the Sunni Triangle -- the most obvious place for insurgents from the Baathist regime to go -- was sparsely patrolled. And sure the capitol was still reeling from lawless rooting. But Franks held a meeting where they planned to start pulling out troops in 60 days. 90 days after that, they'd be down to 30,000 troops. This was April of 2003, more than a year and a half ago.

"As the Baghdad meeting drew to a close, the president in a teleconference congratulated the commanders on a job well done. Afterward, they posed for photos and puffed on victory cigars.

"Within a few months, though, the Bush administration's optimistic assumptions had been upended. Many of the foreign troops never came. The Iraqi institutions expected to help run the country collapsed. The adversary that was supposed to have been shocked and awed into submission was reorganizing beyond the reach of overstretched American troops."

The rest of the article details repeated warnings that more troops would be needed to win the peace and how Bush and Rummy ignored it all.