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Washington -- Even the staunchest supporters of President Bush's Iraq enterprise were less than cheered by his speech to the nation Monday night outlining the path forward, some describing the administration as being in a state of panic.
In particular, the neoconservatives who provided the intellectual argument that an invasion of Iraq could provide a template for democracy in the Middle East are expressing open alarm that this effort is dangerously off course.
"There's no question the administration has been in total panic mode, and they don't need to be, because Iraq is salvageable," said Danielle Pletka, vice president of foreign and defense studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank that has been a hotbed of support for the war. "But I think there is still so much indecision about what to do that it's going to be hard for them to do the right thing."
Many administration hawks were drawn from the neoconservative intellectual ranks, notably deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, the chief architect of the idea that the United States could make Iraq a democratic beacon.
Their dismay comes as some Republicans in Congress fear that Bush's Iraq policy has become unhinged, given the relentless bad news coming out of Iraq: a multiheaded insurgency among Shiites and Sunnis, the assassination of the president of the Iraqi Governing Council, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the steady rise in U.S. casualties.
Others on the political right, as distinct from their more interventionist neoconservative colleagues, have begun openly attacking the administration. Wall Street Journal contributing editor Mark Helprin called Abu Ghraib "a symbol of the inescapable fact that the war has been run incompetently, with an apparently deliberate contempt for history, strategy, and thought." He asked why the administration was trying to occupy Iraq with current troop levels, "even as one event cascading into another should make them recoil in piggy-eyed wonder at the lameness of their policy.................."
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/05/26/MNGFR6RT7I1.DTL
In particular, the neoconservatives who provided the intellectual argument that an invasion of Iraq could provide a template for democracy in the Middle East are expressing open alarm that this effort is dangerously off course.
"There's no question the administration has been in total panic mode, and they don't need to be, because Iraq is salvageable," said Danielle Pletka, vice president of foreign and defense studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank that has been a hotbed of support for the war. "But I think there is still so much indecision about what to do that it's going to be hard for them to do the right thing."
Many administration hawks were drawn from the neoconservative intellectual ranks, notably deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, the chief architect of the idea that the United States could make Iraq a democratic beacon.
Their dismay comes as some Republicans in Congress fear that Bush's Iraq policy has become unhinged, given the relentless bad news coming out of Iraq: a multiheaded insurgency among Shiites and Sunnis, the assassination of the president of the Iraqi Governing Council, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the steady rise in U.S. casualties.
Others on the political right, as distinct from their more interventionist neoconservative colleagues, have begun openly attacking the administration. Wall Street Journal contributing editor Mark Helprin called Abu Ghraib "a symbol of the inescapable fact that the war has been run incompetently, with an apparently deliberate contempt for history, strategy, and thought." He asked why the administration was trying to occupy Iraq with current troop levels, "even as one event cascading into another should make them recoil in piggy-eyed wonder at the lameness of their policy.................."
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/05/26/MNGFR6RT7I1.DTL
