Washington Post Piece With Better Headline

Believing own war rhetoric worse than a lie
Fort Wayne Journal Gazette

WASHINGTON – President Bush planted the seeds of the destruction of his Iraq policy before the war started. Salvaging the venture will require an unprecedented degree of candor and realism from a White House that was never willing to admit – even to itself – how large an undertaking it was asking Americans to buy into.

The notion that Bush led the country into war through indirection or dishonesty is not the most damaging criticism of the administration. The worst possibility is that Bush and his advisers believed their own propaganda. They did not prepare the American people for an arduous struggle because they honestly didn’t expect one.

How else to explain the fact that the president and his lieutenants consistently played down the costs of the endeavor, the number of troops required, the difficulties of overcoming tensions among the Sunnis, the Shiites and the Kurds? Were they lying? The more logical explanation is that they didn’t know what they were talking about.

Because the White House failed to prepare Americans for what was to come, the administration faces a backlash. This weekend, Bush said the terrorists in Iraq were seeking to “weaken our nation’s resolve.