America: It's been a bad week for the hawks. The war is not proving to be a "cakewalk", as a prominent "new conservative" forecast last month.
On top of that, the most influential hawk counselling the Bush administration, Richard Perle, has had to resign as chairman of the Pentagon's influential Defence Policy Board because of his business dealings.
The resignation promoted the US watchdog Center for Public Integrity in Washington to take a closer look at all 30 members of the board. It found that at least nine are executives or lobbyists with companies which have contracts worth billions of dollars with the Pentagon and other US government agencies.
"To the public, it looks like you have folks feathering their nest," said Charles Lewis, executive director of the Centre for Public Integrity. "I'm shocked and awed by the audacity of who has been selected and who is serving on this board" (whose members are unpaid and serve as special government employees).
The discrediting of Perle, who has long advocated war with Iraq as a way of restructuring the Middle East in the interests of the US and Israel, comes on top of disclosures that the US government has this week given huge contracts to companies like oil giant Haliburton - which Vice-President Dick Cheney ran - for the reconstruction of Iraq.
Mr Perle said that he stood down to prevent allegations about his business interests distracting from the "urgent challenge" of invading Iraq. These included a contract to represent Global Crossing, a telecommunications company which wanted his help in getting Pentagon support for its proposed sale to a foreign firm controlled by investors from China and Singapore.
US officials had balked at putting Global Crossing's fibre-optics network, which the military uses, into Chinese ownership. Under the deal, Perle would get a $125,000 retainer and a bonus of $600,000 if the sale was approved by a government review panel which includes Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Perle has now ended his relationship with Global Crossing. He also sits on the board of Autonomy Corporation, a British data-mining firm which lists contracts with the US Homeland Security and Defence departments. A recent article in the New Yorker by Seymour Hersh accused Perle of mixing business and politics in a meeting with a Saudi-born businessman and a Saudi industrialist.
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Richard Perle was one of those who advised the Pentagon that Iraq would fold quickly in the face of American might, right and technology. "There may be pockets of resistance, but very few Iraqis are going to fight to defend Saddam Hussein," Perle told MSNBC in February. The "cakewalk" phrase came from another Defence Policy Board member, Kenneth Adelman, a former assistant to Donald Rumsfeld, who told Washington Post readers last month: "I believe demolishing \ Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk. Let me give simple, responsible reasons: (1) it was a cakewalk last time; (2) they've become much weaker; (3) we've become much stronger; (4) now we're playing for keeps."
Mr Cheney, too, was in the "pushover" school. He has been noticeably silent since he predicted to NBC on March 16th that the regular Iraqi army wouldn't fight and that even some of Saddam's Republican Guard were "likely to step aside".
Pro-war commentator Andrew Sullivan admitted that "we hawks might have underestimated the psychological effect" of former President George H.W. Bush's "brutal betrayal" of the Iraqi people in 1991 (when the US did not support a Shi'ite rising). The blame game has begun.
Turkey is also being singled out. "There is no question that if we had a US armoured force in northern Iraq right now, the end would be closer," said Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz on Capitol Hill. In December, he exuberantly told reporters after visiting Ankara that support for US troops in Turkey was assured. "Turkey has been with us always in the past," he said, "and they will be with us now."
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In November, the Bush administration was on top of the world. The Republican Party had taken both Houses of Congress and the Bush agenda was set to forge ahead. Suddenly things are going wrong. The troops are getting bogged down not just in Iraq but on Capitol Hill.
Last week, the president suffered a crushing defeat for his measure to allow drilling for oil in the National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. He picked a time when fear over high oil prices might make the case more compelling. But it didn't work. Eight Republican senators - Norman Coleman, Gordon Smith, Lincoln Chafee, Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, Mike DeWine, Peter Fitzgerald and John McCain - voted with Democrats to defeat what they saw as an assault on the environment.
Then on Tuesday three Republicans - Chafee, Snowe and George Voinovich - voted with the opposition to cut in half Mr Bush's cherished tax cut of $726 billion over 10 years because of the growing deficit and fears that the war would make it bigger.
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Muslims in the US have been upset to learn that two major evangelical Christian groups are poised in Jordan to move into Iraq to distribute aid to the mostly Muslim population when the fighting dies down. They are the Southern Baptist Convention and Samaritan's Purse, which unlike other Christian aid groups with experience in Iraq mix proseletysing with food parcels.
Samaritan's Purse is run by the Rev Franklin Graham, who has called Islam an "evil" and "wicked" religion which foments violence. "I think it's a colossally bad move to have a group whose leader says Islam is 'evil' follow in the wake of US troops in Iraq," said Ibrahim Hooper, of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Washington. "It would seem to confirm every suspicion in the Muslim world that the war on Iraq and the war on terrorism are really a war on Islam."
Ken Isaacs, international director of Samaritan's Purse, denied that they would be bringing in Bibles or Christian literature. "We are an evangelical organisation," he said, "but it's important to recognise we're a very experienced relief organisation."
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The US State Department lists 45 countries in the "coalition of the willing" against Iraq. But wait! Turns out that Slovenia isn't a member. The Alpine state was included in George Bush's list, and even offered $4.5 million as its share from the US budget for the conflict. As hundreds of Slovenians took to the streets in Ljubljana to protest at their government's supposed support for the war, Prime Minister Anton Rop demanded an explanation from Washington. "It was a mistake," came the reply.
Perhaps Washington is again confusing Slovenia with Slovakia, which is a willing member. Bush once told a reporter from Slovakia: "The only thing I know about Slovakia is what I learned first-hand from your foreign minister, who came to Texas. I had a great meeting with him. It's an exciting country. It's a country that's doing very well."
Except that it wasn't the foreign minister, it was the prime minister, and he was prime minister of Slovenia, not Slovakia.
So the number is 44. Or should that not be 43? The Solomon Islands wanted out but continue to be listed as a member. Maybe the US can't do without them.