PRESIDENT BUSH'S explanation of his latest plans for Iraq last night was marred by a couple of important omissions. First, the president failed to acknowledge that, according to the standards he himself established in January, the surge of U.S. troops into Iraq has been a failure --

...If the war were going worse than it is, the deployment schedule probably couldn't have been much different...

...Yet Mr. Bush's plan for the coming year is based, once again, on the hope that Iraqis will take steps that will make the added security provided by U.S. troops sustainable -- and prevent a worsening of the situation when American brigades withdraw. Though this hope proved illusory during the past eight months, there will be no change in the U.S. mission.

It's impossible not to be skeptical that the necessary political deals and improvements in Iraqi security forces will take place. Unless there is progress that justifies withdrawals going well beyond those he announced last night, Mr. Bush is unlikely to achieve the agreement in Washington on Iraq he said he now aims for.

And yet:

But according to Gen. Petraeus, Mr. Crocker and the consensus view of U.S. intelligence agencies, if the U.S. counterinsurgency mission were abandoned in the near future, the result would be massive civilian casualties and still-greater turmoil that could spread to neighboring countries.

Mr. Bush's plan offers, at least, the prospect of extending recent gains against al-Qaeda in Iraq, preventing full-scale sectarian war and allowing Iraqis more time to begin moving toward a new political order. For that reason, it is preferable to a more rapid withdrawal. It's not necessary to believe the president's promise that U.S. troops will "return on success" in order to accept the judgment of Mr. Crocker: "Our current course is hard. The alternatives are far worse."

The Washington Post has always been a stalwart advocate of America's idiotic attempt to rule the world by eradicating left-leaning governments anywhere they raise their ugly heads. But this is getting ridiculous.

They need to admit failure. If you really think about it, Bush's failure signifies a failure of our entire post-Cold War foreign policy. You can blame the neo-conservatives for taking our Establishment off the rails, but the Washington Post waved their pom poms as the Establishment built the apparatus that enabled the neo-conservatives.

Even now they are cheerleading an attack on Iran. The sad fact is that any genocide or regional conflagration that occurs in the Middle East as a direct result of our policies is going to be justifiably blamed on the people at the Washington Post that advocated those policies. And they recognize this. That is why they will do everything in their power to forestall the day of reckoning. And that means that they will advocate a 10-year occupation of Iraq. Because if the day ever comes when they have to account for what they have endorsed, no one will ever listen to them again.