"Failure Is Now the Only Option"

No less a right-wing hawk than the aristocratic Arnaud de Borchgrave published an essay in last Wednesday's Washington Times which admitted that Bush's Iraqi War is now a full-fledged disaster. From "failure is not an option," de Borchgrave says, we've arrived at "failure is now the only option."

He points out that although the Iraqi "insurgents," whoever that turns out to be, have not won a single battle (and will likely NEVER win a battle with the superior American forces), they are nonetheless winning the war ... an irony that should not be lost on anyone who paid attention to what went down in Vietnam.

De Borchgrave includes a damaging vignette from the recent daily life of Douglas Feith, who is Rumsfeld's Number 3 guy in the Department of Defense. Feith was speaking "before a group of young political science graduates when one of them asked him, 'How would you define success in Iraq?' Silence followed as Mr. Feith shifted from foot to foot. He finally looked at his watch and said, 'Well, that was the last question.' He then left without answering it. Even Mr. Feith's aides were perplexed."

Feith is one of the more notorious neocons in Rumsfeld's Pentagon and is reportedly the bright bulb who suggested to Bush that WMDs ought to be touted as the chief reason for invading Iraq. He also carried the philosophical banner for denying the Geneva Conventions to "terrorists" grabbed in Afghanistan, a policy that then got exported to the Iraqi theater with unforeseen consequences. Feith is reported to be widely hated by the people who have to work with him (and witness the anecdote recounted above by fellow hawk de Borchgrave). We love the quote from General Tommy Franks, relayed in Bob Woodward's "Plan of Attack." The plain-spoken Franks called Feith "the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth."

And that's who's been running "policy" at the Bush Pentagon.