In recent months, President Bush has acknowledged, ever so slowly, some of his fundamental errors in Iraq.

With persistent fighting even just outside the high-security Green Zone in Baghdad, Bush last week finally admitted what many critics have been saying for years: The administration has failed to give the military commanders in Iraq the resources they needed to protect the civilian population in Iraq.

The resulting levels of chaos, sickening brutality and despair have put American goals in that country further and further out of reach.

At this late date, there are understandable doubts about whether Bush's plan to raise U.S. troop levels makes sense. Asked why he thought his new strategy would work, even Bush himself sounded desperate: "Because it has to."

The bipartisan Iraq Study Group offered only tepid, qualified approval for a short-term troop surge. Even then, the panel warned that more troops could "conceivably worsen" security problems.

Clearly, U.S. and Iraqi government forces must better protect ordinary Iraqis if there is to be any hope for a stable democracy to firmly take root.

But there even are questions about whether Bush's planned buildup would be sufficient. Depressingly, most troops would be committed to a single city — the capital itself, which should have been firmly secured long ago.

Meanwhile, Iraqis on all sides know that the American public is rapidly running out of patience and could eventually support a premature military withdrawal, regardless of the consequences.

Those consequences would be disastrous for Iraq, where the current violence would pale in comparison to the future bloodbath — which much of the fractious Arab world would inevitably blame on the United States for generations to come.

Nor can we afford to see Iraq become another pre-invasion Afghanistan, where terrorists were sheltered as they planned catastrophic assaults on the United States.

With all that in mind, the Bush administration has to insist on greater cooperation, responsibility and fair-mindedness on the part of the Iraqi government. That government must certainly commit itself to disarming Shiite as well as Sunni militias.

Bush likes to present himself as a tough guy. At this point, he needs to get tough and demand action — not just vague promises — from the Baghdad government.