Glenn Greenwald has a nice piece up on this, thought I'd add my two cents. You see boys and girls, the reason that the pundit class and official Washington can't allow themselves to let go of the idea that Iraq could have worked if it had only been done right is that the real lesson of this clusterfuck shakes their entire world view down to its very foundation.
The fact of the matter is that the failure of the War in Iraq, otherwise known as "The Demonstration Project of American World Dominance", is just another symptom of the same long term historical trend that led to the fall of the Soviet Union, the fall of Marcos and the velvet revolution.
Simply put, these vast super power war machines are effectively impotent in the face of a determined recalcitrant indigenous population. Small groups with semi-automatic weapons, truck bombs etc mingling within a sheltering population can bring any occupying army to its knees. No matter how great their technological advantage. So, it turns out, that the only thing that a super power's military is good for is destroying other super power's militaries.
This is a complete mindfuck to the PNAC crowd who were convinced that the fall of the Soviet Union meant that we were now free to use our military to exert our will unfettered on the entire planet.
Iraq is proving beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this dream was a dangerous hallucination.
But it is a hallucination that official Washington, and the pundit class is still unwilling to let go of. Let alone the multi-trillion dollar military-indusrial complex. They want to believe that it is all the bumbler George Bush's fault. If only some smarter warlord were in charge we could have really shown them sand niggers a thing or two! Bullshit. The whole concept is a pipedream. A delusion. You might have the power to blow the whole world up, but you don't have the power to intimidate it, to bend it to your will. Na Ganna Happen.