Religious Leaders Ahead in Iraq Poll (washingtonpost.com, 10/22/04 forthcoming edition, page 1):

'The picture it paints is that, after all the blood and treasure we've spent and despite the [U.S.-led] occupation's democracy efforts, we're in a position now that the moderates would not win if an election were held today,' said a U.S. official who requested anonymity...

The very informative blogger, Salam Pax, visits Washington and writes a report for the UK Guardian. Guardian Unlimited | US elections 2004 | The Baghdad Blogger goes to Washington: day one (guardian.co.uk, 10/22/04 edition (forthcoming)):

"Ultimately, the conversation turns to Iraq. We all seem to agree that even if John Kerry gets elected as president it is too late for a drastic change in policy. I am surprised at how much everyone here seems to have bought what the Bush administration has been selling them - especially the line about a well-educated Iraqi middle class that will take over and transform Iraq into a democratic paradise.

To tell you the truth, I bought into that as well - and boy were we wrong. That educated middle class was everywhere around the world, but not in Iraq. What it decided to do was to shut its mouth or turn religious.

This is an interesting comment from someone who supported the U.S.' initial nation-building plans.

You may, at times, have wondered how the current leadership of the United States could keep digging itself deeper and deeper into trouble in Iraq. It seems like, no matter what horrific events occur there, the reponse is to deny reality, and then to do the same things again. And again. What gives?

This may offer some insight. The New York Times Magazine article: "Without a Doubt," by Ron Suskind (nytimes.com, 10/17/04) has some of the most frightening quotations I have yet seen about the difficult times we face. Namely:

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

That would explain a few things, wouldn't it?