It was a weekend full of bad news about the Middle East -- there was the synagogue bombing in Turkey and the helicopter crash in Mosul. In the face of all the chaos and carnage, many attendees had given up on the idea of democracy in Iraq, even as they sang encomiums to George Bush for his democratic vision. There was, in fact, a strange disconnect. When I suggested that Bush's rhetoric was insincere, the audience hissed. But when asked about the feasibility of his vision, many attendees seemed incredulous that anyone would take the idea of Middle Eastern democracy seriously.

In a column this week, conservative writer and talk-show host Armstrong Williams wrote: "The administration's decision to depose Saddam Hussein represents the first meaningful step in 50 years of attacking the basic problem of hopelessness, tyranny and poverty in that region. This historic step will make democratic reform possible."

Williams chose his words carefully, because while he may believe in democratic reform, he's dismissive of the idea that democracy itself can work in Iraq. Sitting on a panel called "The Media and the War," Williams spoke of Muslims' knack for being wrong about everything. "I can't think of one time when we've had a Muslim on the air, when we asked deep, penetrating questions, where they're on the right side," he said. "You find me a Muslim who, if you ask the right question, they'll come out on the right side of the issue. You can't find them."

After the panel I asked Williams how this Muslim failing bodes for democracy in Iraq. He snorted. "That's a pipe dream," he said, laughing. "Democracy in Iraq?" he repeated, as if he'd never heard anything so preposterous. Noting that the country had never been democratic before, he asked, "What makes you think it's going to work now?"

Many Weekenders shared Williams' doubts. Introducing a panel called "The Iraq Battlefield Now," moderator Kayne Robinson, former chairman of Iowa's Republican Party, indicated that he's stopped believing the administration line. "The premise that people would want passionately to be rescued is of course in question," he said. In fighting the Iraq insurgency, "We're going to kill a lot of Iraqis and restrict their movement. We may well become a guerrilla-manufacturing machine."

"If the war causes the loss of the presidency and of Congress, where are we then?" asked Robinson. "For many of us, the question is a political one that reaches beyond Iraq."

The members of the panel included U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn.; U.S. Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind.; U.S. Rep. Roger Wicker, R-Miss.; and the controversial pro-Israel scholar Daniel Pipes, whom Bush recently appointed to sit on the board of the U.S. Institute of Peace. Perhaps constrained by politics, Coleman and Pence offered strings of banalities, euphemisms and professions of faith in the president's faith.

"We have a president who fundamentally understands that this is a battleground between the forces of democracy and terror," said Coleman. "Either we win or the world loses. The president has the fundamental historical understanding of saying we have to stay the course."

He went on to assure the audience that "we're doing what has to be done."

Pence has actually defied Bush's Iraq policy by attempting to convert part of Iraq's aid package into loans. Yet his criticism of the president was so subtle it was almost as if he had been speaking in code. First, he quoted a biblical proverb, saying: "A man putting on his armor should not boast like a man taking his armor off." And then he continued: "I really felt for the president the other day when he lamented that he hadn't planned for the Mission Accomplished banner to appear over his right shoulder."

His argument for forcing Iraqis to pay for their own reconstruction was couched in the language of self-empowerment. "We ought to consider partnering with the people of this oil-rich nation in their own reconstruction," he said. "We ought to ennoble them."

Still, like Coleman, Pence spoke of Bush like an acolyte praising his guru. "The dogged determination reflected by the character of this president will see us through," he said.

Next came Wicker, who was sitting next to Pence and dressed like him in a dark apricot shirt and navy blazer. Like the other two congressman, Wicker made his offering of praise to the president, but then he admitted he was troubled by Saturday's reports that Bush wanted to expedite the transfer of power to the Iraqis. If the reports were true, Wicker said, that was "a major shift."

"Allow me among friends to at least worry about that this morning," he said. "If we leave behind a situation in which the Shiite majority feels it is entitled to wreak vengeance on the Sunni minority, I worry about that."

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