So much for democracy

This is really sickening. Has it come to your attention that the Bush administration is considering "other alternatives" to democracy in Iraq? Check out this London Times article that Frank Ford sent me entitled "Bush's final gamble: giving Iraq a dictator?":

The news was buried in a New York Times story last week but it confirmed what others in the Washington chattering classes have been observing lately.

The context is that the White House has been inviting outsiders in to the Oval Office to discuss strategy in Iraq. The new chief of staff Josh Bolten has apparently been trying to pierce the intellectual cocoon in which the president comfortably resides. Bush family consigliere James Baker has already been asked to rescue the president’s failed Iraq policy.

But last week the new nugget: an anonymous “military affairs expert” attended a White House briefing and reported: “Senior administration officials have acknowledged to me that they are considering alternatives other than democracy. Everybody in the administration is being quite circumspect, but you can sense their own concern that this is drifting away from democracy.”

Here's something else the article says that lets you know something about how we are viewed abroad:

Remember Dick Cheney’s comments about the insurgency being in its “last throes”? Those words have become as credible as the president’s denial of torture as an interrogation policy authorised by the White House.

That observation is just dripping with cynicism. And with good reason.

So how's the administration going to spin installing another dictator in Iraq after assuring us that the reason we went to war was to bring democracy to its people? I just can't wait for the answer to that one.