There was a time when putting hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops on the ground in Iraq could have established law and order overnight. That time -- as former U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki warned in vain in early 2003 -- was right after Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was toppled.

Shinseki presciently recognized that there was no alternative to having hundreds of thousands of American troops on the ground in order to secure Iraq right after the fall of Saddam.

Iraq had been under an exceptionally harsh totalitarian dictatorship since the Second Baath Republic was founded in 1968, some 35 years earlier. It had not known even a semblance of democratic rule since the toppling of the British-backed monarchy and parliamentary system in the bloody coup d'etat of 1958. As happened in Germany after World War II, there was no substitute for hundreds of thousands of occupation troops to come in for several years to secure law and order from the word 'go.'

Shinseki's recommended policy was also consistent with the "Powell Doctrine" of former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and former national security advisor Colin Powell. Powell was secretary of state when the key decisions about the occupation of Iraq were taken. But his immense experience and record of military success, although unrivalled by anyone else in the Bush administration, was ignored by all his senior colleagues.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld shut Powell, the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency out of the policymaking process on the occupation of Iraq. Rumsfeld turned key policy decisions in the early days into the hands of his favored neo-conservative ideologues handpicked by then Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Under Secretary for Policy Douglas Feith. President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney backed Rumsfeld 100 percent and left Powell powerless and isolated, the most lame duck secretary of state in modern American history.

The results of those decisions were catastrophic. The "Powell Doctrine" mandated that the United States go to war with overwhelming force. Powell also articulated the so-called "Pottery Barn" rule -- "You break it, you own it" -- that laid out the responsibility of the United States and other great powers for fixing what they broke and taking responsibility for restoring security in Iraq.

However, Bush policy, pushed by neo-con ideologues, rejected these previously tested and successful principles. It focused on trying to build an ideal democracy in Iraq from scratch at breakneck speed.

As a result, today Iraq has a supposedly impeccably crafted democratic parliamentary system. But there is no credible structure of government or strong, efficient police force or army to secure the country. Real power has devolved into the hands of a network of local militias, often at murderous odds with each other but generally divided along Shiite-Sunni lines. Even in the more than a dozen of the 18 provinces of Iraq that are still relatively peaceful, the Baghdad government can only rule with the cooperation and tacit approval of the local dominant militias.

In this situation, it is now too late to imagine that adding even 100,000 American soldiers on the ground in Iraq, let alone the 20,000 that some Republican hard-liners are calling for, will make the slightest positive impact on the chaotic anarchy in Baghdad and much of the country.

The United States does not even have a reserve of scores of thousands, let alone hundreds of thousands, of troops to commit to Iraq. And even if it did, that commitment would leave the United States with no credible ground forces option to defend its many other major commitments around the world.

Committing much larger U.S. forces, even if they were available, to Iraq would therefore be a recipe for inviting aggression against U.S. interests and allies round the globe. And without any kind of credible national government structure to hold Iraq together, it would be like pouring gold on quicksand.

Today, even the commitment of half a million American soldiers to Iraq might not be able to prop up the Iraqi government, such as it is. Even if that number of troops were available and could make a difference, they would have to be committed to Iraq for at least four or five years, maybe even longer. And there would still be no guarantee of success. But since they are not even available, the point is moot.

Saving Iraq by putting in more troops is just the latest of the many myths that have substituted for any kind of realistic U.S. policymaking on the country. But throughout history people have often preferred myths to unpleasant hard truths.

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