E-Mail This Article to a Friend Remote control Bush’s surrealistic, out-of-touch performance Monday night ignored such vital issues as torture, troop strength, and the intrigues of Ahmad Chalabi

THERE WAS A touch of surrealism to President Bush’s speech on the war in Iraq this past Monday, something reminiscent of the late Soviet era. Maybe it was the controlled environment — the rows of uniformed military personnel assembled at the Army War College, in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Maybe it was his expressionless demeanor and his wooden, affect-free speaking style.

More than anything, though, it was the president’s words: meaningless platitudes that were overtaken by events many months ago, but that he continues to repeat as though he were some mindless party functionary telling the Politburo what it wants to hear, and which everyone knows is untrue. As the Washington Post put it: "After promising ‘concrete steps,’ the White House basically repackaged stalled US policy as a five-step plan."

Monday’s speech was the first of six that Bush plans to deliver before some pallid semblance of sovereignty is handed over to the Iraqis on June 30. Here are three topics he might consider addressing during at least one of those speeches.

• Responsibility for the prison abuses. Amazingly, and appallingly, Bush made it more than halfway through his remarks on Monday before addressing the Abu Ghraib prison scandal — and then contented himself with blaming it all on the seven low-level enlisted personnel who’ve been charged with raping, humiliating, and torturing Iraqi inmates. (And though the proper pronunciation of "Abu Ghraib" is reported to be quite difficult, you’d think Bush could at least have picked one ahead of time and stuck with it rather than mangling it several different ways.) "Under the dictator," Bush said, referring to Saddam Hussein, "prisons like Abu Ghraib were symbols of death and torture. That same prison became a symbol of disgraceful conduct by a few American troops who dishonored our country and disregarded our values."

Unfortunately for Bush, we already know too much for this to be even remotely credible. There is that secret order signed by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, opening the door to the sort of coercive interrogations that made Abu Ghraib possible. There is that memo written by White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, urging Bush to opt out of the Geneva Conventions at Guantánamo and in Afghanistan, lest Bush and other top officials be liable for war-crimes prosecutions. There are the reports of similar abuses coming out of detainee centers in both of those locations, suggesting a scandal that is both widespread and systemic.

A lawyer for one of the Abu Ghraib soldiers has charged that Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the top US military officer in Iraq, was well aware of what was going on, and may have even witnessed some of the abuse during a visit to the prison. Sanchez, through a spokesman, denied it; yet on Tuesday, word came that he would be replaced this summer for reasons that were not entirely clear. The investigation into Abu Ghraib and other detention facilities continues, and no one knows how high it will go. But it was disingenuous for Bush to suggest, as he did Monday night, that the blame can be laid entirely at the feet of Lynndie England, Charles Graney, and their ilk, regardless of how reprehensible their actions may have been.

• General Anthony Zinni’s pointed critique. Even before the invasion, it was common knowledge that the uniformed military leaders who would actually be responsible for fighting the war and winning the peace believed they needed far more troops than Donald Rumsfeld was willing to provide. Now comes Anthony Zinni, a retired four-star Marine Corps general, with a book, Battle Ready (co-written with novelist Tom Clancy), that provides a devastating look at Bush’s failures.

Like other military planners, Zinni believes that if the invasion force had numbered 300,000, rather than the 180,000 that were actually deployed, the situation in Iraq might be very different today. "I think it’s critical in the aftermath, if you’re gonna go to resolve a conflict through the use of force, and then to rebuild the country," Zinni said on CBS’s 60 Minutes this past Sunday. "The first requirement is to freeze the situation, is to gain control of the security. To patrol the streets. To prevent the looting. To prevent the ‘revenge’ killings that might occur. To prevent bands or gangs or militias that might not have your best interests at heart from growing or developing." Of course, all those horrors have come to pass.

No doubt the White House will dismiss Zinni as a political general whose military career peaked during the Clinton era, and whose sole Bush-era appointment — as special envoy to the Middle East — came at the behest of Secretary of State Colin Powell, who’s not exactly a team player. Then, too, Zinni is being mentioned in some reports as a possible running mate for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. But Zinni is right. In that light, Bush’s promise on Monday to "maintain our troop level at the current 138,000 as long as necessary" does not inspire confidence.

• The role of Ahmad Chalabi. Last week Iraqi forces, with the apparent approval of the American proconsul, Paul Bremer, raided the Iraqi National Congress headquarters of Ahmad Chalabi, a long-time favorite of pro-war neoconservatives such as Vice-President Dick Cheney, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith. It was as though American officials who had never trusted Chalabi, including Colin Powell and the CIA, had decided to launch a war-by-proxy against their ideological enemies at the Pentagon.

Chalabi’s phonied-up intelligence on Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction and ties to Al Qaeda did much to advance the cause of war, especially after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. The recipient of some $40 million in American largesse over the years, Chalabi and his henchmen now stand accused of kidnapping, torture, and fraud, as well as the mind-boggling charge of passing sensitive intelligence about US troop positions to the government of Iran.

There was a time when the Bush administration’s foreign-policy apparatus was admired for its competence, if not necessarily for its aggressive, unilateral instincts. That reputation for competence has long since become tarnished. Now we are confronted with the possibility that the White House was tricked into fighting an unnecessary war on behalf of Iranian interests. Can’t this administration get anything right?

George W. Bush launched the war in Iraq for reasons that have proved false, without enough troops to secure the peace, and with policies that encouraged soldiers to torture and humiliate the very people whose affections we were trying win. It’s a sad and ugly picture, and one very different from the rosy scenario Bush tried to paint on Monday night. Maybe the president will be more candid in next week’s installment. Somehow, though, we doubt it.

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