Bush: our intelligence agencies report that Iraq fuels terror so we have to stay the course in Iraq

The correct conservative reaction to things like that leaked National Intelligence Estimate that says Iraq is fueling an increase in global terror is to deny reality. But the Bush administration is going in a different direction; they're taking the bull by the horns and releasing their own sections of the classified NIE.

Part of their more official leak is, again, a recitation of what we already know:

The Bush administration yesterday released portions of a classified intelligence estimate that says .... the war in Iraq has become a "cause celebre" for jihadists, breeding resentment of U.S. involvement in the Muslim world and drawing new adherents to the movement...

Reading that, you might think the administration is catching up to the reality-based community, no doubt to the chagrin of folks like Charles Krauthammer and Bill Kristol. But, you'd be wrong:

The jihadist movement is potentially limited by its ultra-conservative interpretation of Islam and could be slowed by democratic reforms in the Muslim world.

Just like Bush's democratization rhetoric! You know, the stuff that's never directed at Saudi Arabia, Egypt or any of the oil-producers in the Gulf.

But that's not all; here's the money quote, and the argument we'll hear from the right's echo chamber from now until the election:

In addition, it asserts that if jihadists are perceived to be defeated in Iraq, "fewer fighters would be inspired to carry on the fight."

Bingo! There's your justification for an indefinite occupation of Iraq: we have to stay the course until we achieve a "victory" that will so demoralize the "global jihadist movement" that they'll take their ball and go home.

The fatal flaw in this argument is that America lumps every Islamic political movement that opposes the occupation together and calls them "jihadists." There's the rub, because "victory" would mean, of course, a political victory, and in order to actually achieve political stability in Iraq some of those we've defined as jihadists would have to be involved in the country's governance.

What the intelligence analysis is saying -- and this is almost certainly true -- is that if Iraq were to end up with a pro-U.S., largely secular unity government without any influence from Iran, Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi army, the Badr Brigade or any of the dozen other Iraqi religious groups -- Shiite and Sunni -- that have opposed the U.S. presence -- if all of those elements were effectively wiped out -- it would be so demoralizing that Iraq would lose all of its potency as a recruiting tool.

But that particular scenario is never, ever, going to happen -- not in a million years. It's a Catch-22: aside from the fact that a legitimate government has almost zero chance of emerging under U.S. military occupation, if it did it would certainly require that a large chunk of the Iraqi opposition come into the political fold.

And as long as people like Sadr, who's been called a radical militant and a criminal by the U.S. for three years, have a seat at the table when U.S. troops leave, they'll make the claim that they defeated the Great Satan and they'll be hailed as heroes across the Islamic world. Their resistance will be seen as a model for opposing superpower bullying and that'll just create a thousand new recruiting posters for extremists everywhere.

It's a matter of when, not if. Because regardless of whether the U.S. leaves with its tail between its legs in ignominious defeat or manages to cobble together enough of a government that we can "declare victory and go home" -- regardless of whether we leave in six months or ten years -- the day after we get out of Dodge Muqtada al-Sadr, or someone like him, will face a crowd that looks just like this rally for Hezbollah last week:

And he'll say something very much like what Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah told that crowd:

"No army in the world will be able to make us drop the weapons from our hands," Nasrallah said in his first public appearance since the start of the 34-day war with Israel that left Hezbollah's stronghold in southern Beirut in ruins.

He said that only the support of God had allowed Hezbollah to face down the strongest military force in the region and inflict heavy losses on the Israelis.

So Bush's fantasy "victory" -- the one that demoralizes all of political Islam -- is impossible by definition. Saying that we need to wait for it is perfectly circular reasoning; it means committing to more of the Bush Doctrine, more of the same policy mix that the intelligence community -- actually everyone who knows what they're talking about -- has concluded is throwing fuel on the fire of global terrorism.