Bush appears to have been in blissful denial in recent months about Iraq, as have a reliable cheering section in the U.S. media and almost all the Republican presidential hopefuls jousting to succeed him. But some cracks of reality appeared in the State of the Union address.

First, more than three and a half years after he rashly declared "Mission Accomplished" on the deck of the nuclear aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2004, he had to tacitly acknowledge that the mission – however it was defined then and has been repeatedly re-defined since – was still not accomplished at all, nor was there any likelihood of it achieved in the foreseeable future.

Second, for all the exaggerated talk in the U.S. media about how much things have improved in Iraq, especially in Anbar province, over the past year, the grim trend of growing terrorist violence de-stabilizing the Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq grows stronger by the day.

And third, a segment of the mainstream U.S. media remain engaged not so much in a conspiracy of silence as an incompetence of silence about the danger of growing strains between the U.S. troops in Iraq and the Shiite militias that dominate all of the southern half of the country, including the land supply and communications routes used by the U.S. land forces there.

Fourth, while Bush predictably made much of his as yet unfulfilled pledge that 20,000 American troops are due to be withdrawn from Iraq in the coming months, he neglected to note that this action, even if carried out, will still leave troop levels higher than they were before Gen. David Petraeus launched his "surge' policy a year ago.

Finally, however soothing and reassuring Bush tried to be, we note that powerful neoconservative hawks retain key positions in the U.S. national security apparatus. Elliott Abrams of Iran-Contra notoriety remains deputy national security adviser. Elliot A. Cohen runs intelligence and research at the State Department as assistant secretary of state to Condoleezza Rice, and Bush has even just brought back former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, the man who above all others urged him to invade Iraq, as chairman of the Secretary of State's International Security Advisory Board. The board advises the secretary of state on such issues as Iran and North Korea. On Iran in particular, we suggest it will not be difficult to predict what Wolfowitz's advice will be.

Bush has shown by this appointment – as was said about the last Bourbon kings of France – that he has remembered nothing and forgotten nothing.