Unreality-Based Leadership

From a Middle East Policy Council forum called Iraq, Afghanistan, and the War on "Terror":

"Anyway, the other day I understand that someone went into the Oval Office - someone known to everybody here, a rather senior person who is on his way out of the administration - and was asked by the president what was going on in Iraq, and said, with his characteristic bluntness, we're losing - and was asked to leave the office forthwith and not continue the discussion.

So there's a question about what is going on in Iraq, and perhaps the competition between reality-based analysis, much disparaged in Washington these days, and hallucinatory optimism, which is the alternative."

--Chas. W. Freeman, Jr. President, Middle East Policy Council

From Dan Froomkin, via First Draft.