Mr. Bush's Folly

On Sunday night, President Bush announced the collapse of his Iraq policy without admitting it. His speech revealed that every claim made by the architects of the war has proved wrong - and American lives and resources are now being squandered as a result.

There were no weapons of mass destruction; the president did not mention them.

There were no significant prior links between the secular Hussein regime and al Qaeda; the president did not claim them. Instead, he announced that Iraq now was the "central front" because the occupation is fostering the very collusion the invasion was supposed to eliminate.

The presence of 130,000 US troops in Iraq is not enough to pacify the country; the president announced he would seek participation of others through the United Nations previously deemed "irrelevant."

The reconstruction and occupation will not be cheap and will not be financed by Iraqi oil. The president asked for $87 billion for next year on top of $79 billion already spent this year for Iraq and Afghanistan. Even those staggering sums are insufficient, so the president announced plans to beseech previously scorned allies in "Old Europe" and elsewhere to help. The federal government will spend more in Iraq next year than it spends on education at home.

And none of the sunny predicted consequences of the invasion have turned up either. Displacing Hussein has not cowed other rogue nations. It has not smoothed the path to peace in the Middle East. There is no sign of a "democratic transformation" in the region, although Mr. Bush keeps dreaming of it.

The president's war has turned into a debacle. Young US men and women, mired in an occupation for which they are not trained, are the first victims. That has roused the anger of much of the professional military, as reflected in the ovation Marine officers gave retired General Anthony Zinni when he warned the "garbage and the lies...and the sacrifice" suffered by his generation in Vietnam was "happening again" in Iraq.

Americans at home also will pay some of the price of this folly in decreased investment in vital needs, and increased exposure to the terrorist fury generated by an unpopular occupation abroad.

The president announced that the US would spend whatever was necessary in Iraq, as this was vital to "our security." If that is the standard, why does he oppose spending what is needed to avoid the debilitating cuts now hitting our own schools? Surely our children are more essential to our security and our future than whatever way the administration manages to extricate itself from the mire in Iraq. Yet Mr. Bush proposes funds for building schools in Iraq, even as he blocks funds for building them at home.

And that may be the biggest folly of them all.

Robert L. Borosage is co-director of Campaign for America's Future

----------------------------- See fact sheets from the Center for American Progress:

1. What does $87 million buy?

2. Tax Cuts vs. War Spending...and Deficits