FABLES OF THE RECONSTRUCTION

It's amazing how vanquished members of the Bush administration have quite a knack for telling the truth:

Former Army secretary Thomas White said in an interview that senior Defense officials ''are unwilling to come to grips'' with the scale of the postwar U.S. obligation in Iraq. The Pentagon has about 150,000 troops in Iraq and recently announced that the Army's 3rd Infantry Division's stay there has been extended indefinitely.

''This is not what they were selling (before the war),'' White said, describing how senior Defense officials downplayed the need for a large occupation force. ''It's almost a question of people not wanting to 'fess up to the notion that we will be there a long time and they might have to set up a rotation and sustain it for the long term.''

They're better at knocking stuff down than putting it back together again. But we knew that.