Delusionary, Dancing Bush

Events of the last week offer a metaphorical glimpse at the delusion pervading President George W. Bush's White House and other enclaves of Iraq supporters in Washington. Bush and the First Lady spent last Monday clowning with the Easter Bunny (White House counsel Fred Fielding having donned the costume).

At the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), war cheerleaders, dressed as academicians, were delivering a panegyric on how peaceful and stable the situation in Iraq had become. The "surge," they announced, had nipped a civil war in the bud.

"The civil war is over," AEI's Fred Kagan, co-author of the surge, declared proudly. Brookings twins Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack led the cheering section.

Meanwhile, back in the southern Iraq city of Basra and elsewhere, full-blown civil war seemed about to explode. And in Baghdad, formerly protected folks were getting killed by mortar and rocket fire in what is customarily referred to as "the highly fortified Green Zone," which has sequestered U.S. embassy and military officials as well as those of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government.