"In the event that Baker actually advocates what he thinks, Bush's options will be to admit the errors of his ways and the wisdom of his father and father's men or to cast them and caution aside once again. His choice is either Shakespearean or Wagnerian."

Bush II doesn't have any options. He never did; he was just the puppet of Cheney. And now Cheney has been replaced by the new puppet master, Bush I acting through his loyal anconcierge Baker.

Puppet master Cheney would never have replaced Dumbsfeld, especially by Gates of all people. And he would never have done it in such an acutely embarrassing manner to himself, Dumbsfeld and Bush I; the day after the election and only days after the puppet had publicly announced that both Dumbsfeld and Cheney would be staying on for the rest of his term. He would have had at least a week or so face saving interval, then saying that Dumbsfeld was leaving for health reasons or something.

If there are any doubts, consider the uncharacteristic total silence of Cheney, and his going hunting on the day before the election. Surely he had campaign visits scheduled. He'll probably remain for the rest of Junior's term but will be made irrelevant.

There are many things to be said about the Baker Gang, but bad as they might be they will have to be far better than what they're replacing. Whether they can salvage anything from the Iraq fiasco is an open question. Perhaps it will only amount to the Carlyle Group profiting from it rather than Haliburton.

Every single goal of this ill-fated war has turned out the exact opposite of what was intended. No exceptions whatever.

George Bush could not possibly have helped Al Qaeda, Iran and other enemies and adversaries if he was on their direct payroll. No wonder we haven't had another major terrorist attack in our homeland since 9/11.

This article emphasizes the urgent need to rescind the "emergency" powers granted to him, and to prevent the granting of any more. These include in particular rescinding the military commissions law, legalizing his previous and ongoing wiretapping acts, and his signing statements that he thinks allow him to obey or enforce and all the other unprecedented grabs for power he has made and is trying to make. Such powers would be wrong in the hands of the most competent president, and this one's incompetence truly boggles the mind.

The rubber stamp Republican Congress bears much of the blame, for abdicating its responsibility to provide the only effective control on a runaway executive: oversight.

We may actually be lucky that Iraq has turned into such a fiasco. Had it succeeded as hoped we'd probably be even more boggen down in Iran, Syria and who knows where else by now.

Finally, this article proves what I've been saying all along:

George W. Bush is indeed a bold and decisive leader. So is the first lemming over the cliff.

Danner writes: "Nearly four years into the Iraq war, as we enter the Time of Proposed Solutions, the consequences of those early decisions define the bloody landscape." He then provides an accurate litany of the mistakes and their consequences.

But those fateful decisions began well before the war, during its marketing and "planning" stages, and were made out of necessity rather than incompetence. It tends to be overlooked now, but the war was not an easy sell; the public was naturally wary, the truth about the weapons of mass destruction was about to be revealed, and the anti-war movement was gaining speed. It had to be sold quickly, and only on the basis of it being quick, easy and cheap. Hence the talk about cakewalks, our troops being welcomed as liberators, rebuilding Iraq to come out of its oil revenues, etc.

But if the troops were to be welcomed as liberators, and a post-Combat Iraq able to govern itself without US help, why did the State Department spend a year making detailed plans for governing Iraq following defeat of the Iraqi army? Why had the military been drawing up such contingency since the end of the Gulf War in 1991? Those plans had to be covered up and ignored.

The argument by Gen. Shinseki and other military experts for three times the number of troops being proposed, not to defeat Saddam's army but for control of the country afterward, was a triple whammy threat: That number of troops would belied the claim that they would be welcomed with flowers and kisses and that the operation would be quick and easy. More importantly, mobilizing that number of troops and their equipment would have necessarily delayed the operation by several months, almost certainly giving the anti-war movement enough time to succeed in blocking it. So Shinseki and his supporters had to be ridiculed.

The bottom line is that the war's architects had only two choices: Start it prematurely with adequate forces and planning, or abort. They chose not to abort. That decision set the stage for the decisions described by Danner, the consequences of which are defining the bloody landscape today.

But the bloody consequences of that fatal decision might have been mitigated, had they not come to believe their own propaganda. They never could admit their mistakes, even to themselves, and constantly reacted to the consequences of earlier fatal mistakes with new ones. Planning and preparation remained to be not an option.

Far too late, they seem now to be showing the first signs of recognizing reality. Or are they?

I should have written "without adequate forces: below.

The bottom line is that the war's architects had only two choices: Start it prematurely with adequate forces and planning, or abort.