Dick Gephardt says that everything is screwed up in Iraq because President Bush didn’t take his sage advice.

Bush relied too heavily on Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and not enough on moderate voices like Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Gephardt said, adding that Bush also refused to listen to critics outside of the White House, including Gephardt.

“I told the president four times in the White House that we needed help,” the US representative from Missouri said. “This is going to be difficult. He literally did not answer my questions.

“It’s five months after he landed on that aircraft carrier in his flight suit and we still don’t have the help that we need,” Gephardt said.

What’s missing of course, is any explanation of how having international troops, or even more American troops, would improve the situation, other than increasing the number of targets.