It may play out the way President Bush wishes, but wishing is not a strategy. Bush has yet to level with the public about the potential cost in lives, Americans and Iraqis, the countless billions of dollars and the decade-long commitment this will take. He said in his speech this week that he wants to bring democracy and open government to Iraq. In the next breath, he held out the hope that some Iraqi general might stage a coup d’etat, and spare the U.S. military the trouble of deposing Saddam Hussein.

If there’s an Iraqi general out there ready to lead a coup, Bush better hope he’s a closet Jeffersonian democrat. Because even if someone puts a bullet in Saddam’s head, that doesn’t end the issue. Will this heroic assassin then turn around and welcome an invasive inspection regime?Chances are he’ll want to hang on to every bit of chemical, biological and nuclear material he can find. If the goal of regime change means exchanging one evil dictator for one less evil dictator, that’s not an outcome worth shedding American blood for.There is an air of unreality as the administration prepares for war. They assume so much will go well when the purpose of war plans is to prepare for the worst, not hope for the best.

The debate that preoccupied both houses of Congress this week was just posturing, a way to give members ambivalent about a potential war the chance to say what they want, even if they end up voting for the resolution that empowers Bush to take military action against Iraq. A CIA report in the form of a letter to the Senate offered fresh evidence that the administration has exaggerated the immediacy of the threat posed by Saddam, prompting some wavering House Democrats to vote against the resolution and deny Bush a majority of the Democratic caucus. The agency concludes that Baghdad “appears to be drawing a line that stops short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or biological or chemical weapons against the U.S.” It says the likelihood of Saddam initiating such an attack in the future is low, but that he could become “much less constrained if faced by an American-led invasion force.”

The report was declassified after several senators privy to “code word” briefings, the highest level of secrecy, complained publicly that the administration was selectively revealing material favorable to its war aims, and withholding information that might be contradictory. The CIA assessment is a sobering reminder of the flaws in Bush’s case for war. The White House, straining to produce new information for Bush’s prime-time speech, dredged up photos of buildings allegedly housing Saddam’s war machine. But the pictures were not convincing, and got almost no follow-up in the media. The CIA analysis underscores that Saddam is not a threat to the United States right now, but that the easiest way for him to become an immediate threat is to give him no option. Bush could well provoke the use of the very weapons he is trying to prevent. Why is Bush so hellbent? There’s an electoral calculation; he’s good at war, and not much else. Oil is in his blood, and the Saudi government, currently the main supplier of U.S. oil, is shaky. Gaining a foothold in Iraq would mean the Saudis no longer have us over a barrel. And when Bush gets an idea in his head, there’s nothing else for it to compete with. He operates on gut instinct; he doesn’t require rigorous thought and argument to support his beliefs.

A member of the elite special forces who served in the first gulf war shares the administration’s conviction that Saddam has a hollow army, ready for the taking. He expects the conscripts, the Iraqi kids who were hunkered down in the desert in 1991 and fled at the first sign of military action, will turn tail once again, even if they are in the cities. He thinks the regular guard will cave. The question is whether the elite forces, the Republican Guard, will fight to the death the way they did in ‘91. They had been told the Americans would execute them if captured, so they had nothing to lose in resisting. This veteran described the captured soldiers as looking like hardened criminals who belonged on death row. But when the American forces returned to them the Rolex watches they had stolen in Kuwait, and the wallets stuffed with money that they had appropriated, and they saw that the Americans would treat their wounds, these thuggish men openly wept. It’s a wonderful story, but it’s not an invasion plan.

A poll released after Bush’s speech to the nation showed support for war with Iraq falling below 50 percent for the first time. One Senate Democrat compared it to a speech Bush made earlier this year on the economy. As Bush spoke, the cable networks showed the stock market tumbling. With only three weeks left to campaign before voters go to the polls, Democrats can be just as delusional about the coming elections as Bush is about the war. They harbor hope that in the weeks remaining before Nov. 5, they can turn the page to the economy. The stock market has lost $7 trillion over the last two years, the highest percentage loss since Herbert Hoover was president. Investing in stocks is no longer the province of the upper classes the way it was in Hoover’s time. It’s a middle-class pursuit, and quarterly 401(k) reports are arriving in households across the country. Democrats have taken to calling them “201(k)s.” At a midweek Democratic caucus meeting, New York Rep. Nita Lowey, who heads the party’s congressional campaign committee, called war with Iraq “a weapon of mass distraction.”

But the cost to Americans’ retirement accounts may be nothing compared with the cost in dollars and lives if the president’s rosy scenario for Gulf War II turns out to be wrong.