WASHINGTON -- Even the staunchest supporters of President Bush's Iraq enterprise were less than cheered by his speech to the nation Monday night outlining the path forward, some describing the administration as being in a state of panic.

In particular, the neoconservatives who provided the intellectual argument that an invasion of Iraq could provide a template for democracy in the Middle East are expressing open alarm that this effort is dangerously off course.

"There's no question the administration has been in total panic mode, and they don't need to be, because Iraq is salvageable," said Danielle Pletka, vice president of foreign and defense studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank that has been a hotbed of support for the war. "But I think there is still so much indecision about what to do that it's going to be hard for them to do the right thing."

Many administration hawks were drawn from the neoconservative intellectual ranks, notably deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, the chief architect of the idea that the United States could make Iraq a democratic beacon.

Their dismay comes as some Republicans in Congress fear that Bush's Iraq policy has become unhinged, given the relentless bad news coming out of Iraq: a multiheaded insurgency among Shiites and Sunnis, the assassination of the president of the Iraqi Governing Council, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the steady rise in U.S. casualties.

Others on the political right, as distinct from their more interventionist neoconservative colleagues, have begun openly attacking the administration. Wall Street Journal contributing editor Mark Helprin called Abu Ghraib "a symbol of the inescapable fact that the war has been run incompetently, with an apparently deliberate contempt for history, strategy, and thought." He asked why the administration was trying to occupy Iraq with current troop levels, "even as one event cascading into another should make them recoil in piggy-eyed wonder at the lameness of their policy."

Some of Bush's supporters concede the administration has committed blunders over the past year. Many suggest a sharp change in course -- such as adding thousands of troops, or moving up elections or forcefully quashing insurgents -- which they contend Bush did not promise Monday.

"It was important for Bush to remind the American public of the cost of failure," said Michael Rubin, an analyst at the American Enterprise Institute and another neoconservative war supporter. "Basically, Bush was letting us see the forest through the trees."

However, he said, "the devil's in the details, and with the stakes so high, we can't ignore the details."

Yet while criticizing the administration for failures of execution, few neoconservatives have abandoned their belief that the war was a good idea or that it is intimately linked, as Bush insisted Monday, with fighting terrorism.

Joining the neoconservatives in support of the basic war effort are Democratic hawks such as Rep. Tom Lantos of San Mateo, the ranking Democrat on the House International Relations Committee.

"Iraq is clearly waiting to see if we will help develop a more open society or whether we will tire, declare a Pyrrhic victory and leave," Lantos said, urging persistence and greater international involvement.

"Nobody is admitting defeat, and if anything they are taking an even harder line," said Charles Pena, head of defense studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, which opposed the invasion and urges a speedy withdrawal.

Some contend that neoconservatives resemble the communists they once ridiculed, blaming the failures of communist ideology on the Kremlin's execution.

"It's an argument that shows that they didn't understand the problem to begin with, that you just cannot use military force to dictate outcomes everywhere in the world," Pena said. "It's based on this presumption that somehow we have to turn Iraq into a democracy, that that will somehow make us safe, which presumes Iraq was a threat to begin with."

War supporters have been emphasizing the bright spots in the occupation, such as the relative calm in some parts of the country.

Many compare the current situation in Iraq with the darkest moments of World War II, when rampant despair clouded victories that lay ahead.

Neoconservatives warn, however, that the administration seems headed on a dangerous course. Pletka charges the administration with "subcontracting" the political process to the United Nations. Many are particularly worried by the decision to enlist a former Republican Guard general to pacify Fallujah, site of a bloody Sunni insurgency last month. Handing over security to factional militias is a recipe not for elections but for civil war, they contend. They urge instead a crackdown by U.S. forces.

"The truth is it wouldn't take much actually to turn this around, not that they necessarily will," said Gary Schmitt, executive director of the Project for a New American Century, a leading neoconservative think tank. "There are a lot of very positive trends going on in Iraq, and I think if you take care of the security situation and the political trend lines toward real elections, in fact I think Iraq is more than salvageable."

But their critics say the hawks' predictions have nearly all gone awry. The weapons of mass destruction used to justify the war were never found, and the war's cost, rather than being self-funded from Iraq's oil revenues, has reached $170 billion with no end in sight.

Neoconservatives widely predicted an easy occupation followed by an immediate peace, followed by "a flourishing democracy which would cause a domino effect across the region creating democracies elsewhere," said Peter Singer, a national security fellow at the Brookings Institution. "And then the very first foreign policy position taken by this new democratic Iraq, run by their exile friends, would be to recognize Israel, and that would somehow end the Arab-Israeli conflict, and bunnies would dance in the streets, and we would find life on Mars."

Singer said the plan was "incredibly ambitious to the point of absurdity, and of course reality stepped in, and that's where we are now."

Neoconservatives contend they predicted no such thing.

"I'm on the record as saying the occupation would require several hundred thousand troops and the process would take five to 10 years," said Schmitt. "So you didn't get the cakewalk stuff from us. That said, the administration made it harder on itself because, frankly, they planned a military campaign that was quite efficient at getting rid of the government but didn't plan on getting rid of the regime, and the result allowed a lot of Baathist Republican Guard and other insurgents to get their feet under them and create the insurgency we face today.

"I'm willing to say policy was still correct, but I'm not willing to take the blame for people's inability to carry it out in an effective fashion."

© 2004 San Francisco Chronicle

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