Welcome to 201k.com - A Commonwealth Perspective.

On March 4 we issued this challenge to the media:

...in the face of a nearly collapsed society and increasing violence--no small feat in Iraq--the U.S. is toying ever more seriously with "standing down" whether or not the Iraqis "stand up". So the time seems right to ask an obvious question:

Did the Bush administration ignore those who predicted the current situation, or was their goal all along the destabilization of Iraq?

It has to be one or the other; there aren't any other possibilities. Either they chose to ignore the advice or they were always up to something quite different than they've claimed.

Which is it?

We challenge members of the media to address this question.

Today, the NY Times editorial page dances around the same question.

"...The last three years have shown how little our national leaders understood Iraq...the generals in the field were overruled by directives from Washington, where military decisions were being made by men who were guided not by reality, but by their own beloved myths about what Iraq was like and how the war was going to be won.

...the fact that Mr. Rumsfeld continues to hold his job tells us that Mr. Bush doesn't care, that he prefers living in the same dream world that his secretary of defense inhabits...

If the mission in Iraq was to create a stable democracy in the heart of the Middle East and inspire neighboring countries to follow the same path, the results have been crushingly bad...

When Americans ask themselves whether anything has been accomplished in Iraq, they do take note that there have been no terrorist attacks on American soil since 9/11...It's possible that the chaos in Iraq has distracted Al Qaeda, diverting its energy to fomenting civil war between Sunnis and Shiites in the heart of the Middle East...

201k has not heard this "Al Qaeda is distracted by the war in Iraq" reformulation of the "fight them there so as not to have to fight them here" talking point before; has it been offered by the administration or its flunkies elsewhere, or did it come from the Times itself?

In any event, we'd hope that whoever offers it up will be asked to reconcile it with all the rhetoric about "spreading freedom and democracy". In other words, the essential question remains unanswered: was the Bush administration inept or dishonest?