On Aug. 8, David Letterman devoted his Top Ten list to "things overheard during George W. Bush's vacation." No. 4: "Better start making stuff up for the State of the Union Address." The White House was ahead of him. Earlier that day it released a bunch of top-10 lists of its own titled "Results in Iraq: 100 Days Toward Security and Freedom." Examples: "10 Signs of Better Security." "10 Ways the Liberation of Iraq Supports the War on Terror." "10 Examples of International Support for the Renewal of Iraq." And "10 Signs of Democracy."

On Tuesday, the bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, the deadliest suicide bombing of the last three years in Jerusalem, and the Taliban's killing of nine Afghan policemen -- bringing the past week's death toll in Afghanistan to more than 80 -- exploded the myth of progress toward security anywhere in that region. It also laid bare, not for the first time, to what extent the Bush administration exaggerates, embellishes and makes things up, depending on the situation.

The administration exaggerated the danger Iraq posed to American and world security before the war. It made up Iraq's connection with al-Qaida. It imagined a big stash of weapons of mass destruction. It is now exaggerating tales about Iraq's recovery even as Iraq becomes a terrorism sieve in reverse, attracting fighters from Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey and elsewhere and breeding its own in ways it never did before the war. The administration is making up tales about America's ability to go it alone there, without U.N. help, even as the United States pleads with the likes of Pakistan, India and even Germany and France to contribute troops to the occupation.

The "road map" to peace in the Middle East that the Bush administration said starts in Baghdad and heads for Jerusalem, with Kabul somewhere as a scenic detour, is looking increasingly like a trail of shards and tears. This isn't peace. It isn't even a map. It is the consequences of hubris, of a president who, as recently as last week, was reaffirming his sense that the Middle East is an American mandate, that a greater role by the United Nations is not welcome, that Afghanistan and Iraq can be temporarily America's 51st and 52nd state without bankrupting the other 50's economy and forbearance.

Tuesday's destruction says otherwise.

As irony would have it, the Bush administration presented its feel-good report on Iraq to the United Nations Security Council Thursday. The meeting was scheduled a long time ago as a routine update. It's time for something unscheduled and off-script. The United States can easily boast about such picayune achievements as maintaining the dinar's value and keeping most of Iraq "calm" (which is really like claiming to keep most of the Mojave desert calm while Las Vegas burns). But if peace and democracy are to be achieved in Iraq and Afghanistan, and deadly blasts taken out of terror's sails in Israel, the Bush administration is going to have to quit looking at the region as its own Mideastern Texas and turn Iraq truly into a world effort at reconstruction through cooperation.

The war on terror was a vital goal after Sept. 11, 2001. The world was on America's side then, and as far as that's concerned, it still is. The invasion of Iraq was ill advised, and the world wasn't, and still isn't, on America's side. But there's no way out at the moment. There is a better way to stay -- by reversing course and welcoming United Nations involvement.

The Bush administration is loath to relinquish control. But doing so will gain it credibility--the sort of credibility it enjoyed, so briefly, when it focused its attention on a global, cooperative war on terror in 2001. That war, by the way, has scored its biggest successes through cooperation. Witness last week's capture of al-Qaida's southeast Asian bureau chief, thanks to Thailand's and Malaysia's cooperation. The same success could one day be said of Iraq and Afghanistan, and, eventually, Israel and Palestine, if the United States quits acting like the only sheriff east of the Mediterranean.

© 2003 News-Journal Corporation

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