Bush: Stay the course

It seems that the motto of the Bush Administration has been to stay the course in Iraq. Does that really seem like a good idea?

Chances that Iraq will be able to hold credible national elections in January, as promised by its interim leaders and the United States, are rapidly slipping away as insurgent violence sets back preparations and keeps parts of the country out of reach of election organizers, according to a growing number of regional specialists.

Elections for a national assembly are key to the American strategy for transforming Iraq into a democracy that will serve as a model for reforms throughout the greater Middle East and are widely seen as a measure of U.S. success in stabilizing the country. Many Iraqis also are eager to vote as a way of gaining control over their destiny.

But analysts said these plans are looking increasingly unrealistic amid a rising death toll from insurgents, such as yesterday's car bombing in Baghdad and a shooting attack on Iraqi police that together claimed at least 59 lives.

And it is not just nameless "regional specialists" that feel that way. Try our own US Intelligence:

A classified National Intelligence Estimate prepared for President Bush in late July spells out a dark assessment of prospects for Iraq, government officials said Wednesday.

The estimate outlines three possibilities for Iraq through the end of 2005, with the worst case being developments that could lead to civil war, the officials said. The most favorable outcome described is an Iraq whose stability would remain tenuous in political, economic and security terms.

"There's a significant amount of pessimism," said one government official who has read the document, which runs about 50 pages. The officials declined to discuss the key judgments - concise, carefully written statements of intelligence analysts' conclusions - included in the document.

(snip)

Its pessimistic conclusions were reached even before the recent worsening of the security situation in Iraq, which has included a sharp increase in attacks on American troops and in deaths of Iraqi civilians as well as resistance fighters. Like the new National Intelligence Estimate, the assessments completed in January 2003 were prepared by the National Intelligence Council, which is led by Robert Hutchings and reports to the director of central intelligence. The council is charged with reflecting the consensus of the intelligence agencies. The January 2003 assessments were not formal National Intelligence Estimates, however, which means they were probably not formally approved by the intelligence chiefs.

So at best, we maintain the tenuous grip that we already try and maintain of Iraq? Not exactly a call for optimism, is it? I can't imagine this is reassuring, either:

German officials are growing concerned about a conference for Arabs and Muslims on "American Zionist terror" that looks like it will go ahead as planned in Berlin, despite calls for its cancellation by a prominent Jewish organization.

The conference, scheduled for Oct. 1-3, is expected to attract as many as 500 Islamists from around the world to form "a unified response" to the American presence in Iraq and to Israel's existence, according to promotional literature for the First Arab, Islamic Congress in Europe.

The conference is to determine a response at a time when "occupation troops are portrayed as peacekeepers, and the suppressed people fighting for freedom are portrayed as extremists."

At least we can always fall back on our handling of Bin Laden, right?

An experienced CIA counterterrorism officer tells Congress the agency is still failing to adequately staff the hunt for Osama bin Laden, a newspaper reports.

The officer claims that the headquarters unit assigned to bin Laden has fewer experienced case officers now than on Sept. 11, 2001.

Staying the course seems like the worst thing we could do right now.