WHERE’S THE BILL? I looked in the mailbox today and didn’t find the bill for my share of the $700 billion bailout. But then, I didn’t find one for my share of President Bush’s Iraq war, either.

But hey, that’s because the government is financing both on a credit card. I pay mine off every month, but our children and grandchildren will foot this bill.

Remember the Iraq war? That’s what we argued about before the economy went blooey and our life-savings account hit the skids. But we might have argued a lot harder if we’d been getting an annual war surcharge on our income tax bill.

And we probably would have been a lot angrier if we’d found out what was going on behind the smoke screen of secrecy, as revealed in Bob Woodward’s book The War Within. It’s his latest account of Bush’s war, this time revealing the mixed signals, distrust, and in-fighting in the administration over what to do about Iraq, as things continued to go wrong in 2006-08.

Suppose George Bush was coach of the USC Trojans in the worst season you can imagine. Passes keep getting intercepted. The quarterback’s signals are kept secret from the other 10 players on the field. The quarterback keeps getting creamed. Running backs are stuffed at the line of scrimmage.

The guys are doing their best but keep getting blindsided and knocked out of the game. As the body count grows and the team keeps losing yardage, Coach Bush knows his strategy isn’t working. But his coaches are arguing among themselves, conducting secret huddles to figure out what to do, but also giving him misleading news that there’s light at the end of the Coliseum tunnel.

The arguments rage. Keep trying what isn’t working, or maybe send in fresh players for a “surge.”

Meanwhile, Coach Bush keeps issuing cheerful TV interviews to doubtful fans. Of course war is not a football game, and brave soldiers and innocent civilians are still dying, even as news of global economic panic takes over the headlines. But Woodward’s account, using his interviews of key administration players, including the president himself, reveals a team fighting against itself.

Bush frets but seems unable to take command of the chaos. Reducing forces or even, God forbid, an early withdrawal, are out of the question. The idea of sending more troops, a surge strongly opposed by Secretary of State Condi Rice, works its way up and gets the okay.

Politics and Bush’s stubbornness are clearly drawn in The War Within. Strategy reviews go on and on, seemingly in no hurry and often hidden from others in the administration. And no need to tell the voters that the administration is trying to fix a broken strategy. National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley tells Rice: “We’ve got to do it under the radar because the (2006) electoral season is so hot.”

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, VP Dick Cheney’s pet, is a powerful force for the status quo and against anything that makes his strategy look bad. But even Bush eventually realizes that Rummy has to go, and fires him after the Democrats win control of Congress in 2006. Bush keeps his decision to oust Rummy from Cheney until two days before he announces it. Cheney thinks it’s a mistake.

Still the war drags on. If we had the English system, Bush would have been long gone, my Brit friends point out. So the nation resigns itself to waiting for lame duck Bush to depart the stage, blood on his hands, leaving behind his misbegotten war with his credibility ratings sinking like the Dow.

Speaking of which, the smart guys are now saying that the $700 million-plus bailout isn’t going to come near fixing the economic mess. “Fears of world recession deepen,” intone the L.A. Times headlines.

In a few months, one of two brave souls, Barack Obama, who is leading in the polls at this point, or John McCain, will seize the reins of government and tackle the mess left behind. Perhaps Congress will help.

Meanwhile, we have the baseball playoffs and the World Series to follow, and football. Go Dodgers. My heart goes out to my once-beloved Chicago Cubs and the Angels. Good-bye, Freeway Series.

CITIZEN MCCAW: Four local screenings of the documentary Citizen McCaw are scheduled this week at the Fiesta Five Theater, Thursday through Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 2:30 p.m. You can also order DVDs via the CitizenMcCaw.com Web site. Why repeat the documentary? “We will not let this story be swept under the carpet,” vows coproducer Rod Lathim. “The producers have put their money on the line and risked legal entanglements with (News-Press owner Wendy) McCaw so that the community can see the truth behind the News-Press meltdown,” he said. “Countless people have mentioned that they want to see the film. But these will be the last local theatrical screenings we can afford to produce. The filmmakers will be present to participate in a dialogue with the audience after each screening.”

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