Iraq is now “the central front” in the war on terrorism. So the president told us on Sept. 7.

But he didn’t tell us why.

Bush again implied a link between Sept. 11 and the Iraq war. The administration never put forth any evidence of such a link before the war, although the president’s rhetoric convinced a majority that one existed.

Now the administration has made the link real.

Postwar Iraq has become a mecca for radical Islamists, which it wasn’t before the Iraq war. The reason: The administration failed to stabilize postwar Iraq.

I know Karl Rove won’t let the president do a mea culpa in public, although Bush’s belated $87 billion request for Iraq almost qualifies. But it’s insufficient to wrap Iraq policy in the mantra of “rolling back the terrorist threat to civilization.” If we “stay the course” with Bush policies that brought terrorism to Baghdad, we lose.

The core of the Iraq problem is not the invasion of several hundred Islamists across Iraq’s borders, or even the leftover Saddamists who seek to create chaos. The real threat lies with millions of Iraqis who are turning against U.S. occupation because it can’t deliver security and services. There will soon come a tipping point, at which, if people can’t see their lives improving, they’ll reject the U.S. presence. Then they will provide the sea in which terrorists can swim.

In middle-class Baghdad neighborhoods, teenagers are kidnapped by gangs and held for ransom; houses are ransacked at gunpoint; girls are raped. Iraqis have no experience with this kind of crime wave. Meantime, many older people are dying in 130-degree heat with no air-conditioning or refrigeration.

You’re tired of hearing these stories? Then ask why the occupation authorities still haven’t fixed the problems.

The $20.3 billion the administration is requesting for Iraq reconstruction is long overdue. Much trouble could have been avoided if it had come earlier. But if reconstruction follows the same old pattern, the money won’t do a lot of good.

It serves no purpose to hand out no-bid contracts to firms that are cozy with the White House, if their staffs refuse to enter Iraq when security is rough. It does no good to prate that we are turning over power to Iraqis, if we treat the new Governing Council as we have treated the Afghan leader Hamid Karzai and deny it the resources to function.

Reconstruction must be treated like a strategic campaign, not a pork barrel for Republican buddies. Contracts should be awarded to whoever can turn the lights on, or stand up a phone network, whether they are local Iraqis or gulf Arabs or Europeans or Turks.

And ideological experiments should be curbed in a situation where they can reap disaster. Example: The administration wants to privatize state-owned Iraqi firms as soon as possible, with the exception of oil. But the only people with enough money to buy them are Saddam cronies who got rich off sanctions-busting. Such projects will only increase unemployment and anger at the occupation, while creating a Russian-style class of mafia capitalists.

And while we’re on the subject of reconstruction funding, Bush “still hasn’t leveled with Americans about the cost. Republican officials say the real price of reconstruction will be $75 billion (apart from military costs), of which $42 billion is supposed to come from our allies.

As they used to say in the 1970s, is somebody smoking weed?

To sell the allies and the American public on such a massive project, the president has to tell them what went wrong – and how he’ll change it. For starters, why did Bush officials lull the public into believing that occupation would be cheap?

The Washington Post notes that the president wants to spend more in Iraq than the total amount that all 50 states need to finance their projected budget shortfalls – a whopping $78 billion. And yet he’s proposing more tax cuts for the rich.

I think Americans are willing to stay the course – if they know which course they’re staying, and what their money will go for. The facts must not be hidden behind the rhetoric of fear.

Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial-board member for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

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