Americans live in a fantasy world, Jill over at Skippy points to one example, but the pervasive unreality of the underlying story needs to be brought home.

Leader Pelosi is doing her part, by bringing a privileged resolution on the floor of the House of Representatives, which would hold a closed session on the National Intelligence Estimate. The motion was defeated with Shays of Connecticut being the only Republican to vote for it.

She contends that "someone is not telling the truth" about Iraq, if the NIE does indeed conclude that Iraq has made the fight against terrorism more difficult. This is the conclusion one would have to draw from the grave readiness problems that the Army faces.

The Newsweek story, which is everywhere else the cover story, reports:

Not long after NEWSWEEK's visit, U.S. and Afghan National Army forces launched a major attack to dislodge the Taliban from Ghazni and four neighboring provinces. But when NEWSWEEK returned in mid-September, Sabir's fighters were back, performing their afternoon prayers.

This kind of ineffectiveness, which is visible in the seven lost provinces in Afghanistan. For those of us who grew up watching the North Vietnamese Army snap Nixon's "Vietnamized" provinces one by one, the reports are eerily familiar.

The failure to defeat the Taliban, now becoming visible, is part and parcel of an executive which has acted without oversight and above the law. Leader Pelosi points out that in the House the Republican Majority has systematically pulled the plug on every mechanism for the minority to hold the majority to account. One example is how Gingrich barred the Democrats from holding "Study Group" hearings funded by Congress, which is in sharp contrast to how the Senate works.

The failure in Afghanistan has been baked into the cake. Prior to the war a series of key infrastructure pieces were either unready or in outright disarray. One example being the failure of the TFSMS - the attempt by the Marine Corps to update its billeting and supply management system. Right now according to Pelosi "there is more oversight on the Clinton Administration's gas bill" than there is on any national security or war related activity.

The long train of failures in strategy, funding and execution has many sources. Not the least of which is the combination of two wars with massive reductions in revenue. This means that not only is there a shortage of income, but the United States people have had to pay to dollar for every aspect of the war. We've gone beyond "guns and butter" to "cruise missiles and caviar."

The way that this shell game of reduced revenues and increased expenditures has been paid for is by reductions in force readiness, training and preparedness. This is important because the claim of the executive is, essentially, that we are on the strategic defensive - that is, we hold Afghanistan and Iraq, and eventually our opponents will be exhausted trying to take them from us. The strategic defensive is a difficult place to be historically - few nations win protracted defensive wars. Instead the strategic defensive is the best stance before a war - deterring attack, while placing less burden on finances and economy - or as the means of blunting an initial offensive and either forcing an end to the conflict with a return to the status quo, or creating the opportunity for a counter attack and seizing the initiative to go on the offensive.

If the reports from the Army and the NIE are true, then the theory that the United States is winning a war of the strategic defensive is untenable. Victory in the strategic defensive relies on two points, one is that those on the strategic defensive are able to sustain that effort longer than those attacking, and it relies on the defensive nation getting synergies on defense.

A classic example is the use of interior lines - a nation attacked from different directions is able to blunt one strike, and then, crossing its own territory, defeat an incursion on the opposite side. Thus needing far fewer troops in defense than the combined forces of the attackers. This was the approach of Fredrick the Great of Prussia, who survived near scrapes with defeat and combined enemies far more powerful than any army he could hope to mount.

The NIE estimate shows that America's strategic defensive is producing the opposite effect - that our involvement in Iraq is improving the quality of opposition, and bogging America's resupply and repair capabilities with a higher than sustainable loss rate. This was the conclusion I came to almost two years ago from preliminary data. So far, the predictions outlined there have become reality - the gradual destabilization of the Iraqi state and the inability of the United States and its allies to mount effective offensive operations. We can see this by the move to building massive defensive works around Baghdad - an admission that the government there is rapidly becoming an oil field with a flag - and the crumbling control over warlords in Afghanistan.

The American people have not faced up to the fact that they cannot continue to vote for the status quo, and get a change in policy. However, the moment where there is a counter-consensus is coming: John Kerry voted for the original conflicts, and for the original appropriations. In 2004 he seemed to be unable to define himself with relation to the war, now he has:

Iraq has been a national security disaster and a terrible set-back in the war on terror. As Robert Kennedy said of Vietnam, there is enough blame to go around. We must all accept our responsibility to change course. We don't need misleading speeches. We don't need slogans. We need leaders who will tell it straight and stand up to this administration and say it’s time to change course. Ned Lamont is providing that kind of leadership.

He is backing an amendment for a phased withdrawal from Iraq in the senate.

The options available are not the ones being presented, even the members of the current ruling coalition admit this. The combination of "cruise missiles and caviar" is not sustainable. Either there must be a dramatic reduction force commitment, that admitting that one or both of the wars we are engaged in are lost causes, or it means increases in taxes to pay for the wars we are fighting. That presumes, of course, that the present group in charge improves its strategic ability some how, otherwise the third option can be called "pouring blood and money down a dark hole."

The inevitability of this last option has prompted the brush fire rebellion in Republican ranks, a growing "change the course" block in the Senate, and a Democratic caucus in the House that now seems determined to bring to account an executive that has over reached its power, over spent its credit, and over stayed its welcome.