Guns and rose colored glasses

The NYT reviews the Pentagon's pre-war power point presentation predicting the "sweets and roses" they promoted so heavily before the invasion of Iraq.

Based on this and other hopeful suppositions, the command’s planners projected what the American occupation of Iraq might look like. After the main fighting was over, there was to be a two- to three-month “stabilization” phase, then an 18- to 24-month “recovery” phase.

That was to be followed by a 12- to 18-month “transition” phase. At the end of this stage — 32 to 45 months after the invasion began — it was projected that the United States would have only 5,000 troops in Iraq.

Instead we're inexorably approaching 5,000 war dead and an occupation that under the White House's definition of victory, would have to span generations to achieve. And now we're supposed to trust that these same military geniuses have a plan to defuse Iran? Can we just cut off their contact with the outside world and lock them into their offices until 2009 instead? That would make me feel safer.