In two rounds of talks at the United Nations and Washington last week, the United States told U.N. representatives that everything is on the table except the June 30 deadline for handing over power to a new Iraqi government, U.N. and U.S. officials said.

"The United States told us that as long as the timetable is respected, they are ready to listen to any suggestion," a senior U.N. official said.

They will allow nothing to disturb this timetable, because it's based not on considerations of what's right for Iraq, or even how best to achieve the administration's declared goals for that country, but entirely on what will best serve George Bush's re-election campaign. (Kevin Drum makes the argument here.) They mean to remove from consideration one of the strongest arguments that the Democrats have for making a change in government, because they know it's the kind of thing that could really gain traction with the American people, who might support incursions into foreign places, but only if they're short and relatively bloodless.

In the run-up to the war in Iraq, one thing that many proponents of the invasion were clear about (this was especially true of so-called "liberal hawks" like Ken Pollack, but was also said by "realist" proponents as well) was that if we were to achieve the goals of creating a stable, Western-friendly, relatively liberal regime in Iraq, the post-war scenario required would be long-term, on the order of 5 to 10 years. (If you add into the mix the rather absurd neo-con plan to bring full Western-style democracy to the country, then the longer period would almost certainly be required as we rushed the country through the stages necessary to set the conditions under which democracy could survive, without which we would likely be creating a Potemkin democracy.) They urged that we not take on this task unless we were willing and able to see it through to the end, and said that toppling Saddam and then cutting out before replacing him with something viable was in some ways worse than not doing anything at all.

(This subject has been a bone of contention between myself and my friends, liberals all. While most of them opposed the war unequivocally and now want us out immediately whatever the cost, my feeling is that having gone in and done what we've done, destroying the political infrastructure of that country, it's our solemn obligation to put things back together before we leave -- we broke it, so we should fix it. That's not something we should do on our own -- nor should we have gone into Iraq without true multi-national support and U.N. backing -- but it is nevertheless our responsibility to put things to right. The mess that Bush allowed post-invasion Afghanistan to turn into was one of the strongest arguments in my mind against supporting Bush's invasion of Iraq: I didn't think they were in any way capable of doing things right, which turns out to be exactly the case.)

So that's where we apparently are right now. We've taken away the glue that held Iraq together, and have provided nothing at all to replace it with, and now we're just going to walk away, turning things over to the U.N. no matter what, all so little Georgie Bush can be returned to office. Cynical manipulation wins out over ideologica necessity once again (and the neo-cons in the administration must be cringing -- I really believe that they believe all the things they said, and now they have to look on as political considerations override everything).

I have my doubts whether the U.N. is going to agree to take things over under these conditions. Without a stable security situation, going into Iraq means sending in large numbers of troops, and what country is going to agree to contribute them, given the bad feelings about United State's unilateral actions? Why should their troops bear the brunt of the Bush's mistakes? Not only that, but if they're savvy about U.S. politics, they may realize that they can play a role in eliminating an administration that's hardly friendly to them, and, in fact, seems bent on destroying the entire structure of the international security apparatus created by the Allies after World War 2. But, then again, to do that would take a cynicism as monstrous as that of Rove.

One can only hope.