And you thought there was no bright side to the horror in Lebanon? If you're a neocon wacko, you can use it to try to cover the world's biggest ass

Effing unbelievable. You could understand if it was the Moonie Washington Times, but the Washington Post? Yet there it is on the front page:

Crisis Could Undercut Bush's Long-Term Goals

If you don't smell a rat yet, read a couple of grafs:

The Israeli bombs that slammed into the Lebanese village of Qana yesterday did more than kill three dozen children and a score of adults. They struck at the core of U.S. foreign policy in the region and illustrated in heart-breaking images the enormous risks for Washington in the current Middle East crisis.

With each new scene of carnage in southern Lebanon, outrage in the Arab world and Europe has intensified against Israel and its prime sponsor, raising the prospect of a backlash resulting in a new Middle East quagmire for the United States, according to regional specialists, diplomats and former U.S. officials.

Well, those "regional specialists, diplomats and former U.S. officials" could well have talked about how disastrous the Lebanon crisis is to U.S. foreign-policy interests, but the implication here that it is undercutting current U.S. foreign policy ("Bush's long-term goals"?!) not only is pure bullshit but can only have come from the neocon psychopaths who got us into the Iraqi quagmire or their apologists.

The strategy is as transparent as it is dishonest: See, it's not our fault that Iraq is all effed up! It's just these darned things that keep happening, things that are beyond our control!

Of course, an excellent argument can be made that the emboldening of Hezbollah is an indirect, or maybe even direct, result of our cosmic blundering in the Middle East, by turning most of the world against Israel and ourselves and at a markedly higher level of potential violence, and by emboldening Iran to challenge U.S. power, like by encouraging its Hezbollah clients to make trouble.

But instead, you see, the neocon wackjobs, who apparently still have no clue what went wrong with our Iraq adventure, are apparently promoting the line that our policy there would be a glorious success if not for (sigh) all these mysterious setbacks. To use one of the most popular ass-covering phrases in Bushworld--now, it appears, trying desperately to cover the world's biggest ass: "Who could have foreseen?"

The simple answer, of course, is: anyone with a working brain. For a more detailed workup, see Paul Krugman's column today.