Mortimer's view on Iraq

Mortimer B. Zuckerman is the editor-in-chief of US News & World Report. I have been getting his mag for the last year or so (hey, it was free with my subscription to Salon.com) and have always thought he leaned way over to the conservative Republican view of the world. Imagine my surprise when I got the latest issue tonight and read that he has bought into the new narrative that the Bushites have done nothing right in Iraq (a POV best shown on Front Line's The Lost Year last Tuesday on PBS).

Here's a sample of Mortimer's new take:

Alas, whatever chances we may have had to overcome these difficulties have been torpedoed by the breathtaking incompetence of the Bush administration in managing postwar Iraq. Senior officials from the president on down ignored warnings that we might win the war and lose the peace. Gen. Tommy Franks won the battle for Baghdad but seemed to feel that planning for the postwar period was someone else's job. But whose? We sent an inept group of operatives to run Iraq, often appointed because of their political leanings. Whatever support we originally enjoyed there we began to lose when we allowed criminals to rampage. Then the Americans, fabled for their can-do efficiency, failed again and again to deliver electricity, water, and, most critically, security.