Washington Post columnist Dana Milbanks notes in his column today that the White House spent yesterday talking about Clifford the Big Red Dog and immigration (who let the dog into the country?) instead of the fourth anniversary of the conflict in Iraq and the administration’s continuing policy and strategy failures in Iraq. Even worse, not even a mention of the four year’s of honor, sacrifice and commitment of our troops.

As Iraq observed the fourth anniversary of the fall of Saddam Hussein yesterday, the lead item on the White House Web site, under the heading “LATEST NEWS,” was a photograph of Clifford the Big Red Dog at the annual Easter Egg Roll on the South Lawn.

“There were many children’s characters in attendance including Charlie Brown, Bugs Bunny, Arthur, and Curious George,” said the caption under the photo, which alternated with a shot of Laura Bush and two Easter bunnies on the Truman Balcony and a painting of one of President Bush’s Scottish terriers with a fiddle-playing butterfly.

. . .

That pretty much ceded the field to Iraqi politician Ali Allawi, who gave a speech in Washington yesterday as he released his new book, “The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace.” Allawi was not the most recognizable of figures; the Washington Times and his host, the National Press Club, both identified him as “Ari” Allawi, giving him a rather Jewish-sounding name for an Iraqi leader. But Allawi’s somber presentation may have been the ideal way for a war-weary Washington to remember Baghdad’s fall on April 9, 2003. Allawi brought grim tidings and no obvious solutions.

Somehow, that little “Ari” slip-up doesn’t surprise me coming from a Washington Times-sponsored event.

And what does he think about the currently proposed strategies for Iraq?

Stay the course? “The seeds of instability and insecurity will remain,” he predicted.

Withdraw U.S. forces? That “will lead to, in my mind, greater insecurity and instability, or it will lead to a free-for-all.”

And the rest of his assessment of Iraq — historically, currently and in the future — only gets worse.