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POLITICAL HORIZONS

Baghdad failures might threaten Bush's chances for re-election.

President George W. Bush is twice mired: in the quagmire of an Iraqi occupation gone wrong, and in the sinkhole of domestic politics, where the failures in Baghdad threaten to drown his chances for re-election in November. In order to truly persuade critical swing voters, Mr. Bush requires a very different message than he does when trying to persuade the rest of the world to help create a stable Iraq. So when he recast his objectives for Iraq in last night's televised speech, it was supposed to satisfy two audiences. Few Americans will cast their ballots next November on whether prospects for Middle East peace have improved or Baghdad's streets are safer. But they do want their troops home, and some, at least, despair of America being vilified abroad -- even as Mr. Bush's generals warn that more troops, not fewer, may be needed until after Iraqis hold their first-ever free elections, scheduled for late this year. A quick handover of authority to Iraqis and of responsibility to the international community might help. It would go a long way toward legitimizing the post-June 30 Iraqi government if its still unnamed members are not "seen as American lackeys," said Amatzia Baram, a senior fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace. But any truly independent Iraqi government with real authority could interfere with continuing U.S. military operations, a chance no president is about to take. And the rest of the world still wants no part of the huge risks inherent in sending troops to Iraq. The handful of countries with militaries big enough to make meaningful troop contributions -- France, Germany and Russia -- have all ruled it out. Turkey has been told its forces are not welcome. And even if yesterday's new United Nations Security Council resolution leads to the legitimization of the interim Iraqi government, it won't take the pressure or the spotlight off the Americans." One of the dirty little secrets about June 30 is that the U.S. still won't allow Iraqis to control their own destiny," said James Steinberg, director of foreign-policy studies at Washington's Brookings Institution, which invited a panel of experts yesterday to discuss the post-transfer Iraq. U.S. forces would retain wide-ranging powers under the new resolution -- which may help to sell the deal at home, but may make it even harder to push through the Security Council. Just last month, U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was vaguely suggesting that as many at 15 more troop-contributing countries might send forces to Iraq after the handover. Now, with the insurgency intensifying and the prison-abuse scandal further sullying the Americans' reputation, the challenge is to keep the foreign troops already in Iraq from bailing. It's "important to take the 'US face' off the occupation," Kenneth Pollack, director of research at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, said yesterday. That might make it more palatable to Iraqis and the rest of the world, but the harsh reality is that no other face can replace Uncle Sam's in Iraq -- even that of the United Nations, unless the Germans, French and Russians come onside. And those governments, hostile to the war in the first place, have shown no enthusiasm for helping Mr. Bush out of the mess they believe he was wrong to create. The President's biggest problem is that he is fast running out of ways to justify both the initial war and the occupation. Saddam Hussein's banned arsenals turned out to be a mirage. There is no evident progress toward making the war a beachhead for democracy in the Arab world. And the moral high ground of ousting a brutal dictator has eroded. "There has been a complete collapse of trust in the United States," said Shibley Telhami, who is the Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland. "The moral argument was the last thread," he said, and the Abu Ghraib prison scandal "severed it." For Mr. Bush, that makes sharing the costly and difficult task of enlisting the rest of the world that much more difficult. And without the rest of the world in Iraq, his sales pitch looks shaky at home.-Paul Korin.