Dream On, Dream On

"Half my life is in books' written pages, Live and learn from fools and from sages, You know it's true, All the things, come back to you."
-Aerosmith

You know, Steven Tyler might well have written that song for George W. Bush regarding his dreams about invading Iraq. In the latest in a series of US intelligence assessments, we are told that dreams are made of such fragile strands, and they just don't always come true.

A series of new U.S. intelligence assessments on Iraq paints a grim picture of the road ahead and concludes that there's little likelihood that President Bush's goals can be attained in the near future.

Instead of stabilizing the country, national elections Jan. 30 are likely to be followed by more violence and could provoke a civil war between majority Shiite Muslims and minority Sunni Muslims, the CIA and other intelligence agencies predict, according to senior officials who've seen the classified reports.

Well, as we seem to keep asking ourselves, "who woulda thunk it?" Oh... that's right. Nearly everyone outside the Bush administration predicted it. Dick Cheney predicted it back when he was in Rummy's place under Bush I. Bush's father predicted it when he refused to invade Baghdad during the first Gulf War. Colin Powell told him in no uncertain terms that he'd be breaking that country and owning it for a long time if he invaded.

But hey... what do those chumps know? In Bubble Boy's world, everything is simply marvelous, Darling. Freedom is on the march, baby.

Two senior intelligence officials with access to classified reporting said Islamic militants allied with or inspired by Osama bin Laden were forging ties to Iraqi nationalists and remnants of former dictator Saddam Hussein's regime. The linkage is similar to the one that so-called "Afghan Arabs" formed with Afghanistan's Taliban regime after the Soviet Union withdrew from that country, they said.

The Bush administration claimed before invading Iraq that Saddam had strong ties to international terrorism, but most counterterrorism experts dispute that and no evidence has been found to support the claim.

"The sad thing is we have created what the administration claimed we were intervening to prevent: an Iraq/al-Qaida linkage," one of the senior intelligence officials said.

Thank you. I am SO glad to finally hear somebody else say that. You know, I'm reminded of a scene from one of the Die Hard films where Bruce Willis' character is crawling through a dusty ventilation shaft, having warned airport security that a massive attack was about to take place. They ignored him, and when he hears massive amounts of gunfire going off, he sighs and says, "I hate it when I'm right."

I hear ya, Bruce. Believe me.