Bush must lead us toward the exit

President Bush has a tough sales job tonight as he explains his plans for "a way forward" in Iraq. He will address a national audience with a collective body language of crossed legs, folded arms and pursed lips.

America wants to hear about a way out. He is expected to announce deployment of 20,000 to 30,000 more troops to the war zone and spend perhaps $1 billion more on economic redevelopment. The increases would be twinned with specific benchmarks for Iraqi military participation and political goals.

The president's challenge goes beyond national weariness with a military occupation bogged down against a violent insurgency and bloody sectarian conflict, at a cost of more than 3,000 American lives and $450 billion.

Fundamentally, Bush is addressing a vastly better-informed public. His listeners know the president's closest advisers argued for the leanest, lightest invasion force and prevailed over a litany of professional advice for using hundreds of thousands more soldiers to fight the war and secure the peace.

Four years later, the American public knows what information was ignored and what was hyped by President Bush en route to the invasion. The administration cherry-picked intelligence data to promote a war it was intent on fighting.

Despite warnings and somber counsel, preparation for the aftermath of the conflict was virtually nonexistent. Worse yet, it was believed to be unnecessary.

Military and civilian experts offered specific cautions against disbanding the Iraqi military and flooding a fragile economy with another 1.4 million unemployed men. Same with dismantling the Baath Party, the ruling political structure, through which a lot of technical and civil expertise was affiliated for the sole purpose of hanging onto a job under Saddam Hussein.

Mired in bloody fighting in a lethal environment that practically makes the U.S. presence irrelevant to ordinary Iraqis, the president will attempt to make a virtue out of recommendations he ignored when they might have made a difference.

The Iraqi Health Ministry reported that 5,640 civilians and Iraqi police died violent deaths in the first half of 2006, according to The Washington Post. That number tripled in the past six months to more than 17,000 dead. Iraqis cannot rely on their occupiers to provide security.

An attempt will be made to use additional troops to secure and hold the toughest Baghdad neighborhoods and Anbar Province. Bush has replaced his senior military leaders in the region and on the ground.

Instead of focusing on turning the fighting over to Iraqis, the U.S. will go for stability until American fighting men and women can be safely pulled back. In an expected change, revised U.S. strategy will put U.S. soldiers into Shiite strongholds as well as those held by Sunnis.

President Bush's toughest critics are not newly squawking Democrats on Capitol Hill. The most disturbing revelations are in best-selling books such as "Cobra II" by New York Times reporter Michael R. Gordon and retired Gen. Bernard T. Trainor, and "Fiasco" by Washington Post reporter Thomas E. Ricks. An informed, dismayed electorate spoke up in the November elections.

The commander in chief and his closest advisers have made arrogant and willfully ignorant choices. The nation is in no mood for stalling and rhetoric. As the president escalates the war, he must also be prepared to explain how his decisions move us toward the exit.