IRAQ WAR

San Francisco Gate: Oval Office outrages just keep coming


Suppose you were a screenwriter and you used the Bush administration as a model for a screenplay. Do you think anyone in Hollywood would buy it?

"Not a chance," would say Steven Spielberg. "Too outlandish. Nobody would believe anything as ridiculously far-fetched as that."

"Too violent," would say Quentin Tarantino. "Too much blood, too much gore."

"Far too Machiavellian," would say Oliver Stone. "The way the backroom guys take advantage of your Colin Powell character and that Condoleezza Rice character goes beyond belief. And whoever heard of a name like 'Condoleezza' in the first place? Get real."

"It has possibilities," would say the Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan. "There certainly is a lot of gallows humor in it. Trouble is, the humor isn't funny."

And so on. Nobody in Hollywood would touch such a bizarre screenplay.

Take the latest chapter of the George W. Bush saga, in which Mr. Bush and his cronies have finally realized what the rest of the world knew long before they attacked Iraq, that the war part would be relatively easy, but the aftermath would be impossible.

Now that the Bushies acknowledge that, they have the incredible chutzpah to go to the United Nations, hat in hand, and ask for help.

This is the same United Nations, bear in mind, that the Bushies said represented "old Europe" before the Iraq fiasco got under way. It is the same United Nations that was deemed irrelevant by the Bushies -- out of touch, tired and not up to 21st-century standards.