Mel Lewyn

Mel Lewyn is a political scientist who studies and writes about how the United States has gone to war: in Vietrnam, Iraq, and Iraq a second time.

GEORGE W. BUSH is so desperate for allies that his hapless Asian tour took him to Ulan Bator, a first for an American president, so he could mingle with the yaks and give personal thanks for Mongolia's contribution of some 160 soldiers to ''the coalition of the willing.'' Dick Cheney, whose honest-and-ethical poll number hit 29 percent in Newsweek's latest survey.

The whole world can see that both men are on the run. Just how much so became clear in the brace of nasty broadsides each delivered this month about Iraq. Neither man engaged the national debate ignited by John Murtha about how our troops might be best redeployed in a recalibrated battle against Islamic radicalism. Right after the L.A. Times scoop, the National Journal's Murray Waas filled in another piece of the prewar propaganda puzzle. Waas reported in the nonpartisan National Journal that 10 days after 9/11, ''President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda.''