When I wrote yesterday about the power of public dissent by military leaders, I hadn’t read the Time piece by Lieut. Gen. Greg Newbold (Ret.). Newbold, a Marine who was the Pentagon’s chief operations officer, “voiced his objections internally and then retired, in part out of opposition to the war,” but had not gone public till now. The article is a doozy. Here’s some key excerpts.

After Vietnam, “Never again, we thought, would our military’s senior leaders remain silent as American troops were marched off to an ill-considered engagement. It’s 35 years later, and the judgment is in: the Who had it wrong. We have been fooled again.”

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s recent statement that “we” made the “right strategic decisions” but made thousands of “tactical errors” is an outrage. It reflects an effort to obscure gross errors in strategy by shifting the blame for failure to those who have been resolute in fighting. The truth is, our forces are successful in spite of the strategic guidance they receive, not because of it. What we are living with now is the consequences of successive policy failures. Some of the missteps include: the distortion of intelligence in the buildup to the war, McNamara-like micromanagement that kept our forces from having enough resources to do the job, the failure to retain and reconstitute the Iraqi military in time to help quell civil disorder, the initial denial that an insurgency was the heart of the opposition to occupation, alienation of allies who could have helped in a more robust way to rebuild Iraq, and the continuing failure of the other agencies of our government to commit assets to the same degree as the Defense Department. My sincere view is that the commitment of our forces to this fight was done with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions–or bury the results.

It is almost a clockwork kind of thing now: Last week saw one political disaster after another for President Bush and the Republicans. So of course we wake up Monday morning to find the new agenda of the week — another war.

There is no scarier read today than Seymour Hersh’s New Yorker piece detailing Bush administration planning for a war on Iran. If you’re saying to yourself, “What? How could that be? Aren’t we still busy trying to disengage ourselves from this gang’s last war?” then you are hopelessly mired in a reality-based perspective.

The House member said that no one in the meetings “is really objecting” to the talk of war. “The people they’re briefing are the same ones who led the charge on Iraq. At most, questions are raised: How are you going to hit all the sites at once? How are you going to get deep enough?” (Iran is building facilities underground.) “There’s no pressure from Congress” not to take military action, the House member added. “The only political pressure is from the guys who want to do it.” Speaking of President Bush, the House member said, “The most worrisome thing is that this guy has a messianic vision.”

Hersh’s sources in Congress and the Pentagon say: (1) That the Bush administration is far advanced in planning for war with Iran as an active policy option; (2) such a war would begin with a campaign of air strikes and covert operations; (3) U.S. leaders are seriously considering the use of tactical nuclear weapons; (4) the U.S. goal is “regime change.”

Over at the Washington Post they’re a little less convinced than Hersh that the war plans represent a significant likelihood of an attack, and a little more inclined to think that the plans (and the talk about the plans) is intended as a gambit to scare Iran.

Meanwhile, the White House calls the talk “wild speculation” — a phrase that will ring a bell for those with memories longer than, say, a few months, since the same term was used in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Josh Marshall makes the obvious but necessary case that Bush’s credibility is utterly, irremediably shot on this matter.

One of Hersh’s sources says, “The President believes that he must do ‘what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do,’ and ‘that saving Iran is going to be his legacy.’ ”

No. Whatever happens with Iran, we already know Bush’s legacy. It is a legacy of reduced options and no-win situations. Given how much more likely an Iranian nuclear weapons program is than Saddam’s turned out to be, the administration’s legacy lies in the self-destruction of American credibility, the hobbling of the U.S. military in an unnecessary quagmire, and the loss of any short-term hope of persuading the world’s billion Muslims that the U.S. is not their enemy.

We now know that, at the same time the Bush administration was telling the world that talk of an Iraq attack was “wild speculation,” the plans were already in motion, the policy approved, the diplomatic effort a sham. The people who led the administration then are the people who are leading it now. (The only significant figure to have left the scene, Colin Powell, is the only senior administration figure who even put up token resistance to the Iraq scheme.)

So when we hear this new talk of war, the most foolish thing we can do is to close our eyes and say, “No, even George Bush isn’t that crazy.” As Paul Krugman says, the “But he wouldn’t do that” line of argument no longer holds. Bush has got that glint in his eyes again: He’s going to save the world. Look out.

This time around, there are just a few thin reeds of hope: We can at least cross our fingers that the reality of the failed war in Iraq will help the “won’t get fooled again” factor finally kick in with the American electorate. The Republican machine is in disarray, and the drums of war are beginning to sound pretty ragged.

Perhaps even more important, surely at this point the uniformed leaders of the U.S. military are surveying the shambles of their forces that Rumsfeld and company have made in the wake of Iraq, and they’re saying, “Never again.” I wouldn’t foresee, and certainly wouldn’t advocate, a “Seven Days in May” scenario of insubordination or coup. But honorable people in the military have other options. The public resignation is a powerful act.

It is virtually impossible to imagine a happy outcome from any conceivable scenario following from an American attack on Iran. The only silver lining in sight is visible from Bush’s vantage: a new war would wipe the front pages clean of all those headlines about corruption and incompetence, all the deficit figures and low poll numbers.

Bonus link: Jim Fallows in the Atlantic explains why, however dangerous the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran might be, the preemptive assault is the worst option possible for the U.S.

I’m not sure anyone is ready for another John Kerry presidential campaign. Apparently the senator is pondering one, but he had a clean shot two years ago, and we’re still paying the price for his inability to exploit it.

Still, Kerry apparently has a new, terse and catchy ten-point plan, and before you snicker, hear him out (from today’s Times):

“Tell the truth. Fire the incompetents. Find Osama bin Laden and secure our ports and our homeland. Bring our troops home from Iraq. Obey the law and protect our civil rights,” Mr. Kerry said in ticking off his list, which also included supporting health care, education, lobbying reform and alternatives to oil, as well as reducing the deficit.

Sounds like a plan to me. I wish the 10 points were out there on Kerry’s web site, but I couldn’t find them anywhere.

If the Democrats are rooting around for a 2006 equivalent to the Republicans’ 1994 “Contract with America,” they could adopt these points, which have the virtues of directness and good sense — and which neatly underscore the Bush administration’s abject failures to be honest, competent, to defeat our enemies, to bring an ill-considered war to an end, and on down the list. It’s good rhetoric, and that’s something Democrats could use.