Or, in a telling bit of dialogue from the witch in "Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves",

"We're doomed."

The reason Bush thinks his escalation plan will work is, "Because I told them it had to."

Failure is not an option.

Defeat is not an option.

Surrender is not an option.

Reason is not an option.

Sound judgement is not an option.

Expert analysis is not an option.

The Decision Maker has "decided". Let the earth under the former Mesopotamia tremble. Meanwhile Bush Jr. stomps around the Oval Office making the sound of rumbling noises trying to match the ones in his head that only he hears.

I want desperately to believe that the less than 3 million or so people that re-elected this delusional, amoral, psycopathic thug are seriously rethinking their vote. How are we going to get through the next 2 years?

Wonder if those old bomb shelters still work. We may yet need them.

I had read somewhere that Dick Cheney had pretty much screwed up everything he touched before becoming VP. Much like his boss. Halliburton was, if I read correctly, in deep trouble financially and the Iraq war allowed the company to profit handsomely. Never mind that the situation continues to deteriorate daily and this latest bit of incompetence will only exacerbate the matter. So you could say that Cheney fixed one screw up by screwing up something else only far worse, and with far worse consequences. Oliver Hardy would shake his head in disgust and say:

"Well, here's another fine mess you've gotten us into."

Please tell me someone out here remembers Laurel and Hardy.

The report out of Paris on global climate change is somehow less arresting than this? Maybe there is a connection. The planet is warming because unenlightened, unaware and worse, uncaring uber-rich dullards such as this are allowed to party, stare down their noses at the "unwashed" masses of society from their perch in the nightclubs of the trendy places on the globe, drinking champagne, snorting coke, having meaningless sex and generally making asses of themselves while the rest of the world watches courtesy of downloadable video devices and software. Someone (Al Gore, I think) said that there is a building concensus for change.

Can't see it from here, though.

Okay.

The NIE says that the situation in Iraq is, not to put too fine a point on it, the utter shits. A complete and incomprehensible clusterfuck of violence, bloodshed, and horrible death. Visions of Armageddon are myopic compared to the "reality on the ground". USA Today once lamented that calling it a "civil war" misses the mark. If it were only that, it said. And no one would accuse USA Today of being "reactionary." So when Stephen Hadley advocates the escalation of the conflict and tries to link it with the "key judgements" of the report, we are of course, listening again to madmen who are hoping that we're all stupid enough to buy the byzantine reasoning of the Administration once more. For my part, I appreciated the MSM trying to get Hadley to just admit that it was a "civil war" when these people kept hoping that if they called it something else, it would be something else. Something less, perhaps. The first step out of madness is to admit that maybe, just maybe, your view of the world is not correct. Let's start by admitting that the sky is in fact blue. Can we at least agree on that? Unfortunately, the question was asked four times, four different ways, and the answer was still more dissembling, more dodge, more ducking the FACTS that they are trying to force US to "get into". This from the ones who never met a reality they didn't challenge. My most sincere and fondest wish is to see these thugs put behind bars or locked up in an asylum where they can spout their overheated theories from padded cells while in straitjackets. "Time for your medicine, Mr. Hadley."

Raise the dosage. Please.

While it may be that Joe Lieberman has an idea that could be worth considering, I sure as hell am not going to pay another dime to finance this, as one poster put it, "clusterfrak" in the former Mesopotamia. The reason I won't? Simple. It's not got thing one to do with the "war on terror." It never did. Despite the fact that it's got a branch of what I've called "Jihad Inc" there, to align this with the more significant war on terror is a mistake of historic and, may I say, potentially catastrophic proportions. I am not giving my well earned dollars to pay for something that is NOT WORKING.

As a practical matter, it's making good money chase after bad. You don't put money behind a bad idea that has been stupidly executed. No sane investor would do that. It's not in the same category of risk. Hell, it's not in the same UNIVERSE of risk. The rate of return here is less than zero. That prospectus isn't worth the paper to print, much less the time to read.

As for Lieberman, he aint been right in the head for a long time, so anything sounding like a sensible proposal coming from him must be a rare lucid moment from his Bush worship. Pay him no mind.