In short, even the most apparently straightforward aspects of a missile-defense system are turning out to be hugely—perhaps insuperably—complex, expensive, and operationally dubious. And the APS [American Physical Society] doesn't even get into the issues of "battle management" (how to convey signals from the early warning sensors to the weapons, how to fire the weapons, how to determine whether the target was hit, and thus whether more weapons need to be fired). Nor, more seriously still, does it outline the complications of dealing with an enemy that's resourceful enough to fire more than one missile.

At what point does someone calculate that the whole project is so drenched in fantasy that it isn't worth the trouble of getting it started?

'Tips for Talking about President Bush with Your Children'':

Think about your values as they relate to this situation. What are your family's values about telling the truth? What would you do if your child lied to you and when you scolded him or her, he or she replied: ''I am not a fact-checker.'' Or added, ''Isn't it time to move on?''

Ask your children to tell you what words mean to them. Explain that words have consequences and lies can come in two, six or 16 words.

Clarify facts. Give short, age-appropriate answers. Explain that shifting strategies at damage control only lead to more unanswered questions. Make clear that even if facts are malleable for President Bush, they're not malleable in your home. Explain that even though the White House strategy may be to say whatever is necessary, even if they have to admit later that what they said the first time wasn't exactly true, you don't do it that way yourself.

Can Dean survive the drubbing? Yes. After all, Carter, Reagan, Clinton, and Bush were all governors with little or no military experience. All had to face questions about their preparation for office. Carter even espoused some establishment-shaking ideas about regulation and reform. But Dean needs to do two things to protect himself from being fatally marginalized, one of which he is already doing. First, he needs to stop being needlessly prickly with the press. (He hasn't done that yet.) And second, he must keep on speaking directly to voters, through his remarkably successful website and in his more plentiful public appearances than the candidates with the inside track. The public, leaving aside gatekeepers like Tim Russert, are less interested in a candidate who can pass a rigged, on-the-spot civics test than they are in someone with the brains and guts to aggressively take on George W. Bush.

The [joint congressional committee] inquiry's report devotes 15 pages to describing a pattern of Bush administration denials and delaying tactics that prevented a fuller account of national failure before the attack. Last month the independent 9/11 commission still probing the attack issued a similar compendium of complaint.

Worry, if you will, about those 28 pages involving the Saudi sheiks. But a deeper, darker problem is our own government's refusal to fill in the blanks about itself.

After eight years of Bill Clinton, many military officers breathed a sigh of relief when George W. Bush was named president. I was in that plurality. At one time, I would have believed the administration's accusations of anti-Americanism against anyone who questioned the integrity and good faith of President Bush, Vice President Cheney or Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

However, while working from May 2002 through February 2003 in the office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Near East South Asia and Special Plans (USDP/NESA and SP) in the Pentagon, I observed the environment in which decisions about post-war Iraq were made.

Those observations changed everything.