By Scott Wright

A few weeks ago, Americans were told to expect a Christmas present from President George W. Bush in the form of a plan (finally) for winning the war in Iraq.

And why not? After well over three years of not winning -- of the situation getting worse and worse every day, in fact -- a plan to turn things around does not seem like too much to ask from the administration that sent 140,000 of our young men and women over there in the first place.

So far, nearly 3,000 of those soldiers have died, and another 25,000 have returned home with various body parts blown off. Considering the lousy Christmas those 28,000 Americans and/or their families will be having this holiday season, Bush's announcement of a plan to clearly define the jobs of the 145,000 or so who are still over there seemed like the first sensible utterance from the commander-in-chief's mouth in a long, long time.

But then last week, Bush changed his mind. “Ho, Ho, Ho!” became “Oh, My, No!” Now, the president wants to wait until after the New Year to announce a new direction in Iraq. In the meantime, we're losing soldiers every day.

Why would he wait? Because, as he's done since well before the invasion began, George W. Bush is making up the plans to fight this war as he goes along. And as of right now -- and for all eternity, I'll wager -- The Decider (his words, not mine) can't decide how he's going to get his rear end, not to mention the rear ends of our men and women in uniform, out of the Sunni-Shiite sling they're in danger of being launched from.

Forget the fact that the James Baker-led Iraq Study Group has rendered its verdict regarding where and how Bush can work to save the mission in Iraq, because the president has already pooh-poohed most of those recommendations. Besides, if you read what's written by people close to him, you already know Bush would rather blow his brains out than take advice from any of his dad's former advisers.

New Sec. of Defense Robert Gates won't be any real help, either, despite the prattle from the political pundits. This is a guy who has been a Bush family crony for decades, who lied about his role in the Iran-Contra affair 20 years ago and was convicted for doing so. Gates was later pardoned by President George H. W. Bush so, if you think he was picked to replace Rumsfeld for any reason other than he owes Dubya's daddy a BIG FAVOR, then you've been staring at the sun too long.

While some may have welcomed Wednesday's announcement that Bush has “decided the general direction he wants to take U.S. policy,” the president has repeatedly proven he and his staff are incapable of producing a competent plan. Therefore, I can't imagine his latest "change in direction" will do America any good in the end.

I can't take sole credit for that sentiment, either. According to a poll conducted last week by CBS News, 75 percent of Americans now believe Bush has permanently bungled the Iraq war. Sure, I was of that opinion 40 percentage points ago... but better late than never, America.

Recently, a friend of mine who reads this column told me he was tired of hearing my criticisms of the Bush administration, in general, and the president's lack of a plan for the war in Iraq, in particular. “Instead of knocking his ideas, why don't you come up with some idea for winning the war?”

Alright, Andy, you asked for it. Bearing in mind that I have no military or diplomatic experience and have never been to Iraq -- either before of after we “broke it” and effectively “bought it” -- here's what I think happens next. I'm warning you in advance, you won't like the ending.

First off, we need around 200,000 additional troops in Iraq. Tomorrow.

Next, we need to take about 100,000 of those new troops and line them along the Iraqi border, pointed directly towards Saudi Arabia, Iran and Syria because that's where the majority of the insurgents (and their money and weapons) are coming from. We ought to tell those countries to take their balls and go home or we'll do something to their balls -- and with the rest of them -- that will make them wish they'd never left their own backyard.

We ought to take another 50,000 or so of those new troops and turn over every magic carpet that flies by, knock down every mud wall we come across looking for Muqtada al-Sadr, the leader of the strongest, boldest militia in Iraq today. We ought to find him, capture him, lop off his head live on CNN and hang it from the dome of the tallest mosque in Baghdad as a warning to others like him. We ought to, but the Iraqi government already said we couldn't, to which Dubya replied "OK."

Finally, we ought to tell the elected Iraqi government and their piss-ant army to get ready for the other 50,000 troops, all drill instructors, who will be coming over with orders to go Sgt. Hulka on their butts: I'm talking obstacle courses, 10-mile hikes in the sand, 100 push-ups, live ammo fired over their heads, urban assault vehicle training -- the whole ball of wax. We've been trying to shape those morons into a military force for over two years and they get more inept every time they egress a vehicle. We can't teach them because we don't have the manpower to do it properly, and 50,000 Sgt. Hulkas could fix the problem.

Seriously, on the surface these ideas are all practical. And they all belong to someone else. Colin Powell said all along that we needed 250,000 to 300,000 troops to properly invade Iraq, and John McCain has been calling for up to 30,000 more troops for months. But Rumsfeld insisted we wouldn't need so many and Vice President Cheney agreed, claiming repeatedly that American troops would be “greeted as liberators.”

The truth is, both Rummy and Big Dick knew we never had that many troops to send to begin with. Last month, Gen. John Abizaid, the top U.S. commander for the Middle East, told the Senate Armed Services Committee as much when he said it was possible to add 20,000 troops for a few weeks or months, but no longer. Abizaid, too, sounds like he knows we don't have the soldiers, equipment or money to do what has to be done to win in Iraq.

As a result of this lack of manpower, experts agree the violence in Iraq will continue to worsen. Sure, we can mass together the U.S. troops already in Iraq and send them all into Baghdad, but we'll end up playing Whack-A-Mole in the cities they leave unguarded. And we can't whack faster than they can wire-up IEDs and launch mortars.

Let's say, just for the sake of argument, that the American public voted to reinstate the draft. And a year from now, after the law has passed and we've trained another 200,000 soldiers, we send them over to Iraq.

First of all, the situation on the ground is only going to get worse in the interim because if the Iraqi government knows we're training more troops to send, they'll know we're not leaving anytime soon. As a result, the Iraqi government will continue doing what it's doing now to disband illegal militias and quell the violence in their country, which is absolutely nothing. So by the time our additional 200,000 troops got there and our force on the ground doubled, the violence would be twice as bad -- a total wash.

Democratic Sen. Joe Biden was among the first to declare that America needs to engage Iraq's neighbors, and the Iraq Study Group recently seconded that motion. But the president has said repeatedly that he won't talk to Iran and Syria, and for some reason that I'm sure has to do with oil, he thinks that Saudi Arabia is a friend of America. Whatever. Those countries aren't going to stop funding the insurgents in Iraq as long as they know we won't even bother asking them to stop.

Military leaders have been saying they need more training and first-rate equipment for Iraqi army trainees for months and months, but month after month nothing gets done about it. The $8 billion a month the American taxpayers are spending in Iraq too often ends up somewhere else; equipment is back-ordered or lost in transit; U.S. troops with orders to train Iraqis end up on patrol because there aren't enough people over there to perform all the jobs that need doing.

It's a vicious cycle, a Catch-22 if ever there was one. We can't win without more troops, but we don't have more troops to send. And we can't leave because the Iraqis will be overrun by their neighbors. But the Iraqis can't be trained to do the job themselves and we don't have enough people to train them, anyway. As a result, 100 U.S. soldiers are coming home in coffins every month.

So is sending more troops into Iraq going to be the president's plan when he finally makes his official announcement of the “new direction” next month? Hell no, because I just told you why it can't be done. Even if that was his plan, he'd have more luck unscrambling an egg than trying to find another 200,000 Americans to send to Iraq -- without reinstating the draft, that is. And I don't see that happening because the American public is done with Bush and his bunch; they wouldn't stand for bringing back the draft.

But until Bush (or, more likely, one of his successors) finds a couple hundred thousand more American soldiers to send into that hell hole, we'll keep losing the battle for Iraq until one day we'll be forced to make another ignominious exit, just like the one we made from Vietnam 30 years ago. And since we can't deploy those thousands we will leave someday, because there's really nothing else we can do. And if you think there's a lot of killing going on in Iraq right now, just wait until the last American soldier leaves and the insurgents really get cranked up.

Wow, pretty depressing, huh? I guess that's not much of a plan, so my apologies to Andy. Probably, plenty of you out there have better ideas than these and I'd love for you to write them down and send them in. Let me tell you, though, the more you think about ideas for solving the problem, the more you'll be glad you're not the mouth-breather who got us into this mess.

And the more you'll feel sorry for George W. Bush, because he's the mouth-breather who did.