Remember Iraq: "Of all the reasons President Bush has moved ahead in the polls, one stands head and shoulders above the rest," writes Josh Marshall. "Iraq has dropped off the campaign radar." Great news for Bush, as reports coming home from this "illegal" war are exceedingly grim. According to a classified National Intelligence Estimate provided to the president in July, prospects for Iraq's future teeter between bad and worse, ranging from a best-case-scenario of tenuous economic and security stability to all-out civil war. And Sidney Blumenthal's survey of military experts seems to back this up:

Retired general William Odom, former head of the National Security Agency, told me: "Bush hasn't found the WMD. Al-Qaida, it's worse, he's lost on that front. That he's going to achieve a democracy there? That goal is lost, too. It's lost." He adds: "Right now, the course we're on, we're achieving Bin Laden's ends."

Retired general Joseph Hoare, the former marine commandant and head of US Central Command, told me: "The idea that this is going to go the way these guys planned is ludicrous. There are no good options. We're conducting a campaign as though it were being conducted in Iowa, no sense of the realities on the ground. It's so unrealistic for anyone who knows that part of the world. The priorities are just all wrong."

Jeffrey Record, professor of strategy at the Air War College, said: "I see no ray of light on the horizon at all. The worst case has become true. There's no analogy whatsoever between the situation in Iraq and the advantages we had after the second world war in Germany and Japan."...

General Odom said: "This is far graver than Vietnam. There wasn't as much at stake strategically, though in both cases we mindlessly went ahead with the war that was not constructive for US aims. But now we're in a region far more volatile, and we're in much worse shape with our allies."

Diverted cash: To make matters worse, part of the cash set aside for Iraqi reconstruction--some 3.46 billion dollars--will be diverted toward security in the country, a decision that Republican Senator Richard Lugar says indicates ''we are failing to fully take advantage of one of our most potent tools to influence the direction of Iraq.'' And a CIA counterterrorism expert told Congress that the agency is still failing to properly staff for the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

And: The ad that beats Bush.