I saw the movie Three Kings when it was released to rapturous reviews in 1999. It was a very good movie (albeit not quite as great as some of the reviews made it sound, in my opinion). There was one particular disconnect between the reviews I'd read and the actual movie. It had been billed as an antiwar movie, and David Russell certainly had nothing good to say about the Gulf War. The most specific criticism made by the movie, though, was that the U.S. should have supported the rebels after the official end of hostilities and not allowed Saddam's forces to massacre them. A very good critique. But the implication of the ostensibly antiwar film was that we stopped killing people too soon! It's a unique antiwar movie whose moral is that we didn't kill enough people. And if you put it to the director in those terms, he'd probably recoil. But that's what the message was.
I've been reminded of that inconsistency a lot lately. A while ago I linked to this post, which crudely and effectively made a point that I'd been noticing for a while: that critics of American foreign policy generally, and of the war on terrorism and/or Iraq specifically, often make arguments whose logical implications are exactly the opposite of what they intend.
A good example of this phenomenon is the debate over what to do with Iraq after we've effected "regime change." Josh Marshall speaks for many administration skeptics when he argues:

Everyone who's thought this through believes that success will require a long-term committment of a robust and quite American peace-keeping force. The phrase peace-keeping really doesn't quite do it justice. What you're talking about is really an army of occupation and reconstruction -- more on the order of post-war Germany or Japan, than Bosnia or Kosovo. Ideally a substantial number of these troops would come from NATO and other well-situated Muslim countries. But a dominant US presence would be required to make the whole thing work.
Unfortunately, it is very difficult to suppose that the Bush administration has the stomach for an operation of such scope or duration. Very difficult.
This is a reasonable point, and the logical next step would be to agitate for a post-WWII-style occupaton and nation-building of Iraq after the war (and take credit for recent reports that the Bush administration is planning precisely that.) And, as reporters such as Bill Keller point out, it is Paul Wolfowitz and his fellow "velociraptors" who are the administration's foremost advocates for such an approach. Those people should be the greatest allies of advocates of nation-building such as Marshall.
Elsewhere, though, Marshall argues for deferring to Colin Powell's judgment in planning for war in Iraq:

Getting rid of Saddam really is necessary. But it has to be done right. So, Mr. President, when the time comes for you to make a decision about Iraq, talk with Paul Wolfowitz and let him tell you what the goal should be. Escort him to the door and lock it behind you. Then sit down for a serious talk with Colin Powell.

(The article doesn't say anything about bringing Wolfowitz back into the room for postwar planning. Perhaps it was cut for space reasons.)
There's only one problem. The "nation-building" advocated by Marshall, among others, violates several of the rules in the "Powell Doctrine." Within the group of senior administration officials, Powell is as unenthusiastic as anyone else about undertaking the effort Marshall calls for. Ask Bill Keller:

This is a notion regarded with deep skepticism at the State Department, where Powell and others tend to see the aftermath of an invasion as a long, world-class headache administered by an American general. Not only within the State Department but elsewhere where foreign policy is discussed and formulated -- including the Capitol Hill offices of leading senators of both parties -- there reigns the view that Iraqi democracy is a utopian fantasy, that the country will fragment like a grenade into ethnic enclaves, that American garrisons will be targets for an eruption of Arab fury, that oil supplies will be endangered, that Americans lack the patience and generosity to midwife a free and pro-Western Iraq.

Marshall's beliefs about what to do in Iraq and his distaste for Richard Perle & Co. are pulling him in opposite directions.