So what's going on here? Some theories:

1. The administration, as usual, is negotiating in bad faith. It has absolutely no intention of actually cutting a deal with the Security Council, it only wants to make a pretense of an effort, in order to gain a little political cover at home and -- maybe -- give the Indians or the Pakistanis or the Turks enough cover at their homes to fork over some troops.

2. The administration (or at least Colin Powell) believes it is in a weak negotiating position. Like any smart negotiator, it's opening with an ridiculously low offer, in hopes of limiting the concessions it inevitably will have to make.

3. The administration remains effectively gridlocked. While Powell has won the battle to the return to the U.N., the neocons continue to hold a veto over exactly what the United States is prepared to offer. And they aren't prepared to offer much of anything -- except puerile rhetoric and increasingly lunatic ideas, like handing Iraq over to Ahmad Chalabi.

4.The administration figures the Europeans (or at least, the Russians and the Germans) are so desperate to get back into the good graces of Uncle Sam, they'll sign just about anything that's put before them. Nobody can afford to see Iraq implode into a failed state, so -- for the moment, at least -- the other Security Council members will bow to inevitability and follow the U.S. lead.

I will leave it to you to decide which (if any) of these scenarios might be correct. But since #2 assumes the administration is in some way "smart," I think we can probably rule it out. On the other hand, while there are reasons for thinking the U.S. negotiating position has at least some strength, I don't think Scenario #4 is especially plausible, either.

That leaves #1 (negotiating in bad faith) and #3 (gridlock.) (Shrugs) Maybe they're both true.

As with almost every other aspect of the Administration's doings in Iraq, I'd lean toward some combination of elements to explain just what the heck is going on. Whenever I try to explain their policies using one criteria only (such as the neocon adherence to their ideological preconceptions, cynical manipulation for domestic political reasons or a straightforward grab for oil or for contracts which benefit Haliburton and other connected companies) I always comes up a bit short. I can get so far, and many things fall into place, but others are rendered completely inexplicable. So, clearly, there's a mixture of motivations involved. From reports in the media, I guess these reflect a divide in the Administration, but somehow I think the State v. Defense explanation is not the totality of it either. I think you have to factor in Rove's domestic political concerns too.

What it actually looks like is that, despite the way the Administration prefers to appears, and contrary to their bully-boy muzzling of dissident elements within the government, there's a lot less control coming from the top than they've been given credit for. That doesn't surprise me, as being a good CEO would seem to require more skills and intelligence than Bush appears to have.

Update: According to this article in the New York Times, when asked about international funding for the reconstruction of Iraq:

...a senior administration official said: "We expect billions of dollars out of the rest of the world. Billions."

Billions of dollars from the rest of the world, when the rest of the world didn't approve of the invasion and the Bush administration didn't give a damn what they thought. Billions during a economic downturn, when the Bush administration turned its billions over to the rich and well-to-do. Billions of dollars, without any say in how they will be used.

Totally arrogant, totally clueless, totally contemptible.