People have claimed that Bush Iraq policy is mostly wishful thinking, but there's always been one thing very solid about it: keeping just how much trouble we're in quiet until after Nov. 2.

But these days, it seems that part of the policy is no more successful than the rest of it. Over the past weeks, the failure of the Bush Iraq policy has become so inescapable that even John Kerry has noticed it, and started talking about what was always the 800-pound gorilla -- or rather, guerrilla -- in the middle of this campaign.

And Kerry's just repeating what a growing group of Republican senators -- and a lot of other people -- have been publicly admitting.

This month, at a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Chairman Richard Lugar, R-Ind., said about the administration's notion that everything would just fall into place after the invasion: "The nonsense of that is apparent. The lack of planning is apparent."

Lugar called the process of trying to rebuild Iraq "extraordinarily ineffective." Of $18 billion Congress provided last year for the effort, only about $1 billion has actually been spent -- and the administration has just announced that $3.5 billion of what's left has to be transferred to trying to provide security.

Lugar has made the point before, but as his spokesman told the Los Angeles Times, "Each time he says it, we're further down the line in a situation where more people are killed, people still don't have jobs and the whole scenario is getting worse."

At the same session, the committee's second-ranking Republican, Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., said the Iraq situation was "beyond pitiful, it's beyond embarrassing, it's now in the zone of dangerous."

The next day Hagel told reporters that the worst thing Americans could do is "hold ourselves hostage to some grand illusion we're winning. Right now we're not winning. Things are getting worse."

"Measure that by any measurement you want -- more casualties, more deaths, more pipeline sabotage. You pick the measurement standard and it's worse than it was six months ago, or 12 months ago. But it's not over."

As Hagel suggests, Americans can hope that things will somehow improve. But that's not the direction things are going, and after every one of the Bush administration's triumphant declarations -- landing on an aircraft carrier to declare "mission accomplished," turning over "sovereignty" to an Iraqi government kept in place only by U.S. troops -- conditions have gotten worse. August saw more attacks on U.S. troops than any previous month, and the areas in Iraq controlled by insurgents are increasing.

Time magazine, last week, found insurgents patrolling streets in Baghdad "within mortar range of the U.S. Embassy." Insurgents can set off car bombs virtually anywhere, killing scores of Iraqis -- and targeting anyone working with U.S. troops, from laundry women to translators.

As Newsweek put it, "It's worse than you think."

Or, as President Bush prefers to say -- in an expression of amazement last Monday that anyone would criticize his record on the subject -- Iraq is enjoying "the hope and security of democracy."

To get to this position took effort -- and as war supporter Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said this month, "We made serious mistakes."

McCain's "we" was generous. It wasn't his decision to treat most of the world with contempt -- an attitude returned in the stone-faced reception to Bush's United Nations speech last Tuesday -- or to dismiss military advice on how much force would be needed to control postwar Iraq or to reject any input from State Department professionals who actually knew something about the country.

Now, retired Gen. Joseph Hoare, former Marine commandant and head of the U.S. Central Command, told reporter Sidney Blumenthal, "The idea that this is going to go the way these guys planned is ludicrous. There are no good options."

Still, even with diminishing control over the country, the Bush administration insists that the goal is elections in Iraq in January.

But first, it has to keep things quiet until U.S. elections in November.

And it's hard to get an explosion to whisper.

© 2004 Star Tribune

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