Time for blinders. (Comment).

AT what point did Iraq become a theater of the absurd?

When Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld pooh-poohed those first few days of post-liberation chaos in Baghdad as the messy consequences of freedom? When it became clear that U.S. forces hadn't a clue about the whereabouts of Saddam Hussein or, for that matter, those dreaded weapons of mass destruction? When the supposed heroics of Pfc. Jessica Lynch turned out to be a lot less than what was leaked to the Washington Post? When CBS, apparently undeterred with the less dramatic version of Lynch's story, pitched her family a two-hour documentary and other projects from both the news and entertainment divisions? When President Bush began hitting the military base circuit and spoke about how the Iraqi people are so much better off these days?

My own pick in the post-war absurdity is the string of public opinion polls that show a majority of Americans now say that the war was justified, whether weapons of mass destruction are found or not. In case anybody forgot, weapons of mass destruction was the administration's justification for going into Iraq -- and in earlier polls it was the primary basis for public support.

Oops.

At some point, the historians will get a crack at this war and their conclusions are not likely to be pretty. It's true that the casualty count is only running in the hundreds -- extraordinarily low compared with previous conflicts of its scope -- but the instability that permeates this new Iraq, and with it the predictable fissures of crime, corruption and ineptitude, is landing squarely in the laps of the U.S. military. It's still early, but this is looking more and more like the 21st century Vietnam -- a quagmire in the desert.

The difference is that, judging from those opinion polls, no one seems to care. Actually, it's worse than that: No one wants to care.

In the months leading up to the U.S. invasion, the prospect of war was a dead weight on the economy. Business owners already reluctant to expand were given a ready-made excuse to lie low: uncertainty about Iraq. You read about it, even participated in it. With oil prices skyrocketing and threats of more terrorism, deferring was a prudent business decision.

Now that we've been told this Teflon war is over, our own liberation has emerged. You see it especially on Wall Street, but there are other signs too: a pick-up in lending, a noticeable revival in tech, steady gains in advertising revenue, an increase in airline flights, spotty improvements in manufacturing. Add it up and you might be looking at an actual recovery -- not the flaccid facsimile we've been living with for more than a year.

Of course, no one seems especially confident that this time it's real -- witness a survey showing that more L.A. companies plan on reducing their workforces over the next three months than adding to them. Maybe such skittishness is a residue of the war, another one of those lagging indicators, but the economists at UCLA's Anderson School have been similarly skeptical about a big-time turnaround and those folks are not often wrong. There are still too many weak links, from staggering budget deficits to out-of-control personal debt.

Which is why, to vastly oversimplify, no one wants to hear about the troubles in Iraq. It just dredges up lingering anxieties about the Middle East and doubts about the folks who pilot our foreign policy and none of that can be good for business.

Better not to ask questions -- just move on and hope for the best.

Mark Lacter is editor of the Business Journal.