Right Wing Nut House

C’mon, America. Lighten up!

President Ahmadinejad being escorted to Ground Zero in New York City shouldn’t get everyone’s panties in a twist. Didn’t you hear? This is the guy who is going to end the Iraq War and allow the boys to come home. If he wants to visit Ground Zero - even though he and his rogue nation are terrorist sponsoring scum - then by God the Bush Administration and all of the Iranian apologists in this country are going to make sure he gets his wish.

In a move that has stunned New York, the Bloomberg administration is in discussions to escort the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to ground zero during his visit to New York next week, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said today.

The Iranian mission to the U.N. made the request to the New York City Police Department and the Secret Service, which will jointly oversee security during the leader’s two-day visit. Mr. Ahmadinejad is scheduled to arrive September 24 to speak to the U.N. General Assembly as the Security Council decides whether to increase sanctions against his country for its uranium enrichment program.

Mr. Kelly said the NYPD and Secret Service were in discussions with the Iranian Mission about the logistics for the possible visit, and whether it will take place at all. He said that for safety reasons related to ongoing construction at ground zero Mr. Ahmadinejad would not be allowed to descend into the pit.

Wouldn’t you like to have been a fly on the wall in the White House when the Secret Service told the President that Ahmadinejad wanted to visit Ground Zero?

The White House will deny the President was informed of the tour but I would be monumentally shocked if Bush weren’t told within 5 minutes of the request being made. Somebody somewhere somehow had to give the go ahead for such planning to occur, especially since you have so many security services involved.

I’ve been wracking my brain trying to think of what anyone could imagine would be a bigger insult to the dead of 9/11. Yassar Arafat laying a wreath in Shanksville? How about Nasty Nasrallah being invited to tour the new wing of the Pentagon, rebuilt after the attacks?

There is no imagining what would be a bigger insult because there wouldn’t be one. The fact is, there is no more wrenching, rage inducing, fist-through-the-wall event that could take place in this day and age than allowing the President of a state that equated the 9/11 attacks with our attack on Hiroshima to visit Ground Zero.

It would be no different than if we had allowed Tojo to visit the Arizona Memorial.

THE LEAST SURPRISING UPDATE IN THE HISTORY OF THIS BLOG

Evidently, the New York City police have nixed the idea of an Ahmadinejad drop by at Ground Zero:

Earlier today, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly had said that Iranian officials had made a “formal request” that Mr. Ahmadinejad be permitted to visit ground zero and that the department, in coordination with the Secret Service, was discussing the matter with officials of the Iranian Mission to the United Nations…

A short while later, around 4:15 p.m., the Police Department’s spokesman, Paul J. Browne, said that Mr. Kelly had misspoke and that police commanders had already decided that a visit to ground zero by Mr. Ahmadinejad was not feasible.

Bush washed his hands of the responsibility for the incident faster than Pontius Pilate:

President Bush, moving quickly to respond to news that the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has asked to visit ground zero, had a spokesman issue a statement aimed at Mayor Bloomberg that said – in so many words — deal with it.

“This is a matter for the City of New York resolve,” a spokesman for the National Security Council at the White House, Gordon Johndroe, said. He added pointedly: “It seems odd that the president of a country that is a state sponsor of terror would visit ground zero.”

Odd? ODD? Holy Christ what a moron! Fire that flunky immediately.

Allah, by the way, has the definitive wrap-up on this mini-storm that will now probably die down, and adds this:

If it happens, if this Holocaust-denying terrorist filthbag is allowed to use the remains of the Trade Center for a photo op, the rage on the right will burn so white hot that even the anti-amnesty activism this summer will pale by comparison.

The tone deafness of that crew at the White House when it comes to the base - on up to and including Bush - never ceases to amaze me.

There is something mildly depressing about the day after Labor Day. Summer is officially over even though the calendar tells us we’ve still got a few weeks left - a trick that science and nature have combined to play upon our Midwestern sense of time’s passing. Here in the heartland, the clock likes to take the long way around the dial, or seems to anyway. It is an illusion born of a belief that the pace of life should mirror the miracle of nature’s timetable for the growth of living things; slow, stately, and with due regard for the sacred trust vouchsafed those who tend, till, or simply love the land.

The lines of demarcation between summer and fall are sharp and noticeable. Evenings are already generally cooler than they were just a few short weeks ago. Dawn brings a slight nip to the air, a reminder and portent of what is soon to come. The leaves shake nervously on the trees with every breath of wind, mindful that soon it will be time to clothe themselves in Autumn’s spectacular raiment.

Speaking of clothes, Sue has already gathered much of her fall wardrobe and is preparing her annual couture auditions, evaluating and making her selections as if she were casting a blockbuster motion picture. Which outfits still fit? Which ones are still in style? Which ones go in the box marked “Salvation Army?” Not a clothes horse but born with the fashion sense of a classy American lady, my Zsu Zsu’s good taste (and mastery of the clothing budget) allows her to appear in public always looking like a million dollars.

This year, new lightweight jackets for the both of us. A couple of pullovers for me. A sweater or two for Sue. Throw in a suit for her and a sports jacket for me and we’re done. I pity those men who fail to plan adequately for the annual fall excursion to the mall and end up helpless appendages as their wives or girlfriends race from store to store unable or unwilling to decide exactly what they want. What Sue and I accomplish in 2 hours takes most couples half the day or more.

I experienced a great sense of self satisfaction being able to sit in front of the TV on Saturday afternoon watching the start of the college football season knowing that many of the hundreds of men I saw at the mall with their wives that morning were still there, the feeling of panic rising in their throats as they watched the time, knowing they had already missed most of the first quarter of the game and praying they’d be granted a stay of execution (or prevented from committing hari-kiri) so that they could be home by halftime.

Another tradition that reminds me that summer is over is the annual wrestling match with our window air conditioning units. We have two monsters - old Gargantuas that spit out 17,000 btu’s each. Last year, we put off taking them out in favor of storm windows until November and paid for it with a heating bill in December that brought out the smelling salts. Not this year, not with the cost of energy what it is. Hence, rather than waiting until the last gasp of Summer has run its course, we have arbitrarily set next weekend for the removal of the behemoths.

It isn’t the weight of these Paul Bunyans of the air conditioning world that makes them such a pain in the ass to move. It is their bulk. Their span rivals that of the wings on a 727. One can barely grasp each end at the same time. Of course, you need someone inside and another outside the window in order to first detach and then lift the Colossus, placing the entire burden on the poor unfortunate who happens to be outside while the inside person runs like hell through the house and out the door, hoping to reach the hapless victim before the elephantine machine falls on his foot and breaks a toe.

Then it’s off to the garage where the two of us must lift these mountains of ancient technology over our heads and on to a shelf where they will be wrapped in blankets like some gigantic steel infants and forgotten about until the following summer.

I suppose we could get new, lightweight, energy saving units but then, what fun would I have writing about that?

Yes, the days are noticeably shorter now, the birds not greeting me in the morning with their cheerful lyrics when I arise. I hear them today when I’m already well into my second cup of coffee. The dawn now struggles to appear before the early news and will soon lose that battle as well. Soon - too soon - the endless and inexorable will overtake our memories of anticipation and restless impatience for the days’ quickening beat as summer gives way to fall. Not a happy time. Nor does it quite impart the sighing sadness that we feel when the leaves begin to change, then fall, and then receive their first covering of frost, causing them to appear as whitened sculptures dotting the landscape, ever so delicate and oh so lovely.

Summer may not be gone but it is certainly being handed its hat and ushered toward the door. It is this time between the light and warmth and the darkness and cold that the ancients chose to observe their most sacred ceremonies. Perhaps they too felt the cold hand of winter closing around them and fought to remain in the light as long as possible. Perhaps they just wanted an excuse for a good party. Whatever the reason, we too observe and mark this time as the changing of the seasons once again connects us to the cycle of life and reminds us of our own mortality in the face of the immutable forces of nature.

Change, neither good nor bad, simply is. Get used to it. Spring is a long, long winter’s way off.

Word has been given to evacuate my little house that I have lived in with my Zsu Zsu for 4 years.

It is not the creek that has defeated me - it is the Fox River which will crest at 2:00 AM this morning and flood downtown Algonquin. The flood authorities reckon that 4 feet of water will be in my little one story house by breakfast time. The house will be a total loss - not even worth rebuilding. At any rate, it will be uninhabitable for weeks.

We are scrambling to move our stuff - Sue’s son is coming with a truck and we are trying to save as much as possible.

We are planning to move to Ohio - a bitter pill to swallow for me. Sue’s family is there but not much else.

No idea what to do with the kitties. Red Cross will take care of them until we’re settled.

I don’t know when I will post on this space again. Please watch for updates as I will try my best to post whenever I can.

Thank you for all your expressions of concern and your prayers.

Farewell for now…

Don’t ask me. I don’t have a clue. But Larry Kudlow does:

An extraordinary money-market development has occurred in recent days. The safest liquid credit instrument — the gilt-edged 91-day Treasury bill — has seen its yield plunge.

Here’s the story: Last Wednesday, August 8, T-bills traded at 4.49 percent. On Monday they dropped to 4.74. On Tuesday, 4.63. And yesterday they fell to 4 percent. This morning they dropped another 50 basis points to 3.52 percent. What’s this mean? It means the entire banking system has turned completely risk averse and is fleeing into the safest haven possible.

It is fear. It is hording cash. It is a mountainous tremor that has seized financial markets.

In terms of funding requirements — for big mortgage banks like Countrywide, or perhaps the major money-center banks and various hedge funds — it shows financial dysfunction.

Um…okay. I sorta understand that. What should we do about it?

The Federal Reserve must lower its target rate and pour new cash into the banking system. It should float the federal funds rate and let reserve and money-market forces determine the right rate level as it injects new liquidity into the system. A T-bill rate around 3.5 percent suggests a fed funds target rate of perhaps 3.75 percent, or somewhere thereabouts.

Right now, because of the fear and hording, cash demands inside the banking system are rising faster than cash reserve supplies injected by the Fed. So the central bank should keep adding new money until the fed funds rate stabilizes in the open market. In other words, the key target variable right now should not be the Fed’s interest-rate target, but the large amount of new cash it is injecting into these markets.

Put simply, Ben Bernanke & Co. should let the money market set the new target rate. Their job is to create enough new cash to stabilize and accommodate the fear-based rush of liquidity demands.

I’m no Milton Friedman, but won’t that goose inflation?

So far, the economy looks fine. This is good. But the Fed must be the lender of last resort for the banking system. For my inflation-worrying friends out there, I say we can deal with that issue if it remerges sometime in the future. After financial stabilization, the new cash can be withdrawn and the fed funds target can be readjusted.

All I’m saying is first things first. That means stabilizing the banking system and accommodating the huge cash demands that have arisen. Right now, the system is virtually frozen.

Whenever the stock market plunges as it has in recent days, Americans get very nervous. Especially these days when more than half of us either invest directly in individual stocks or have shares in mutual funds. Our pensions are heavily invested in the market as well.

And most of us are like me; almost completely ignorant about the forces at work that make stocks rise or fall. This crisis, as I’m sure you’ve heard, is all about the sub-prime mortgage outfits who took advantage of the market when housing was booming by offering loans to marginal (”sub prime”) credit risks. Most of those people will work out fine, paying on time and staying current. But a large enough percentage of those mortgages will be a lost cause, thus precipitating a credit crunch as sub prime lender after lender goes belly up.

With the credit crunch, cash dries up. Even I know that much. Now Kudlow wants the Fed to intervene by dumping massive amounts of dollars in the banking system hoping it will reduce the panic and get everyone’s feet under them.

Whatever Chairman of the Fed Ben Bernanke does, I sure hope he acts quickly and that whatever his prescription is, works.

My latest sports column is up at Pajamas Media. It’s about the dog days of summer and the players who toil away in the heat and humidity:

These are the dog days of summer, the period 20 days before and 20 days after the dog star Sirius and the sun are in conjunction, according to the ancients. That may be. But here in the Midwest, we’ve always seen the dog days as a time that only a dog could love. Life draining, oppressive heat, sauna-like humidity and the phenomena of the late afternoon thunderstorm that appears regularly, coming out of nowhere and disappears almost as quickly, leaving behind those jaw dropping, horizon to horizon rainbows that appear so close at times that you can almost hear the laughing Leprechaun guarding his pot of gold.

In the world of sports, the dog days mean toiling away, pushing oneself physically to perform even while common sense and the thermometer tell you to sit back and take it easy. For professional baseball players, it is the period after the All Star game and before the pennant races heat up in September when going out day after day in the heat and humidity takes not only a physical toll but makes the player pay a psychic cost as well. The mental stress, the little aches and pains all players experience during the course of a season that challenge their physical stamina, and the inexorable grind of a 162 game schedule all combine to make the dog days a test of professionalism and character.

Bill Ardolino of INDC Journal is planning on going to back to Iraq later this month to assess the surge and report in advance of General Petreaus and Ambassador Crocker’s appearance before Congress.

He will be embedded courtesy of Bill Roggio’s Public Multimedia and needs our help to to get there.

In case you are unfamiliar with Bill’s excellent work, follow the links in this post and then make a donation to support on line media efforts to tell the story in Iraq.

Barry Bonds has broken Hank Aaron’s all time home run record. That’s why I am not going to write about him or the record 756th home run he hit.

Nope. I am not going to write about Barry Bonds. I am not going to write about his steroid use, his mistresses, his scowling, brutish treatment of fans, the media and even some of his teammates.

I am not going to write about his tax problems, brought on by his unreported cash income from signing balls, bats, and anything that isn’t nailed down in a ballpark.

I am not going to write about his personal trainer Greg Anderson, languishing in jail on a contempt charge because he refuses to testify against Bonds and confirm that he and Victor Conte of BALCO helped Bonds bulk up.

I am not going to write about Barry Bonds because Barry Bonds is a cheat, a scoundrel, a woman abuser, and a tax dodge.

He is also the greatest baseball hitter who ever lived. But that’s another story for another day. For now, I think we should all boycott Barry Bonds coverage.

Do not read any articles about Barry Bonds.

Do not watch any TV shows about Barry Bonds.

Do not listen to radio programs talking about Barry Bonds.

This is why I am not writing about him. Giving Barry Bonds publicity of any kind will only encourage him.

My friend Richard Baehr of The American Thinker writes an article in which he makes one of the best cases I’ve yet seen to not think, dream, read, or watch anything about Barry Bonds:

There is no other player among the baseball greats whose career took a sudden and dramatic turn for the better at age 35 and over. All of the single season records highlighted above occurred from 2001 to 2004 when Bonds was between 36 to 40 years old. During those 4 years, Bond put up numbers never before matched in baseball history. A career .290 hitter, Bonds batted .328, .370, .341, and .362. A hitter whose highest single season slugging percentage had been .688 recorded the following slugging percentages: .863, .799, .749, and .812. Bonds’ on base percentage, never before higher than .461, rose to these season marks: .515, .582, .529, and .609. As for the OPS or SLOB, Bonds’ single season high had been 1.135 before 2001. His figures for the four seasons were :1.378, 1.381, 1.278 and 1.421.

Bonds SLOB or OPS (slugging percentage + on base percentage) numbers are ungodly. He obviously made a deal with Satan to be able to hit so well. This is another reason not to write about him; he is evil.

Contrast the personae of Barry Bonds with that of the man whose record he broke. There are few athletes in the history of sport who have exhibited more class, more courage, more humanity from the time they first stepped on the field to the day they hung them up than Henry Louis Aaron.

And Aaron has continued to be one of the finest gentleman in sports during his front office stints with the Atlanta Braves. He could have taken the easy way and not paid any attention to Barry Bonds. He could have refused to acknowledge Bonds accomplishment.

No one would have thought any less of Aaron if he had expressed his displeasure with Bonds’ cheating by ignoring him. But there he was, up on the big screen at AT&T Park graciously congratulating him. But what must he have been thinking? Whatever it was, the classy Aaron will keep it to himself.

Barry Bonds was the best player in baseball before he took steroids. I would have written about him back then. During the 1990’s, he was a three time Most Valuable Player, the most complete athlete in the Majors. He could do it all - run, throw, hit, hit for power, hit to the opposite field, and steal bases. He was a one man wrecking crew of a hitter who opponents feared facing with the game on the line.

But he was never a feared slugger. Bonds’ hits were screaming line drives that made it past the infielders before they could react. His homers were also of the line drive variety, the ball tending to find gaps in the outfield rather than make it over the fence. Only after he put on all that muscle did his home runs take on the rubric of majesty; towering fly balls that reveal the true power hitter. And now, he is one of the immortals, a deathless presence hovering over the sport for years, his achievement always stained by his own arrogant belief that the rules weren’t for him.

No, I won’t write about Barry Bonds. Tomorrow. Today, I, like anyone else who loves baseball, can’t think about anything else.

My interview with Sergeant David Aguina, the young man who walked into the lion’s den at YearlyKos and pulled John Soltz’s tail by arguing that the surge is working, is up at Pajamas Media. There is also an audio file with much more from the earnest kid who is surprisingly soft spoken and who brought his mother along for support.

Sergeant Aguina is not a bombthrower or rabble rouser. Some on the left have called him crazy or unbalanced for using the forum to argue for the surge and I am not sure that it was the best place to make that argument. But it is delicious irony that he used the same tactics the left uses to make a point he wanted to make in a hostile setting - “speaking truth to power” so to speak.

He impressed me as a sincere, well mannered, well brought up “kid” (he’s 25 years old). His passion boiled just beneath the surface of that quiet exterior. Believe me, when he started to talk about how those Iraqis shared their lunch with him the day he was pulling guard duty and couldn’t get his own command to send him some food, he got very emotional. His hands trembled slightly when holding the candy wrapper from that day and I got the impression that he would give the Iraqis the shirt off his back if they asked.

Overall, he was very believable. I must point out that while I was able to discover he was in the army (and is currently in the reserves) I have been unable to confirm as yet whether or not he was in Iraq. I have no reason to doubt it except that as we all know, there are many fabulists out there on the right and left and I would not be the first person taken in by one if this nice, sincere young guy turns out to be something less than truthful. (See Update III below where Aguina has confirmed his service in Iraq.)

The reaction among the netroots - outside of the loutish behavior by John Soltz - was interesting. He says they listened politely to him, argued respectfully, and they all ended up agreeing to disagree. Evidently there were a couple of people who dismissed him out of hand but they were the exception.

My own personal experience can confirm the Sergeant’s impressions. Even when people found out who I was, we found common ground talking about writing or blogging. And when we talked about politics, we took turns making our points and tried not to flame the other. It made me wish for just a little more civility and understanding in the blogosphere. My uneven performance in that regard notwithstanding, perhaps my experience at YearlyKos will temper some of the more outrageous insults I toss without thinking at the left.

David Aguina will probably continue his mission to bring his views on the success of the surge to the attention of as many people as possible regardless of their political affiliation or ideological inclinations. We can admire him for that.

Is he right? Time, as it always does, will tell us.

UPDATE

This isn’t the first time Sergeant Aguina has stood up for what he believes at a gathering of anti-war activists:

David Aguina, a soldier who has completed a tour of duty in Iraq, appeared at Chandler Park in military dress to support the war, and politely told anyone who would listen of the four peace activists captured in Iraq in November 2005.

His mother Iris Hernandez told me that David made a presentation for one of his classes on the situation in Iraq that had many of the students in tears and the professor praising him for his organized, impassioned plea.

Just as I admire lefty activists who are passionate about their cause while respecting the views of others, so too I admire Sergeant Aguina. I don’t agree with him on much of anything. But you can’t help but hold someone like him in high regard.

HT: Hesiod

UPDATE II: BLACK HELICOPTERS CIRCLING

Also courtesy of my friend Hesiod, the theory that Michelle Malkin sicced Sergeant Aguina on the netroots:

I was just informed that the guy in uniform this morning…..the one who posed a question to the panel about Progressives and the Military….. was a plant from the Right Wing….one Michelle Malkin to be specific, who has a blog called hot airbags or something self-referential like that.

More on this later. If this is true, it represents the most egregious, ugly, shameful and anti-American tactic I’ve ever witnessed in my own experience of studying and trying to improve US civil-military relations.
I’m not going to link to her blog, which I just checked out…and indeed, she’s accusing the conference of stifling dissent. QED Malkin, you are an idiot.

Before someone puts two and two together and comes up with something different than 4, here’s full disclosure:

1. It is true, I work for Michelle Malkin moderating comments and performing other duties.

2. It is true I wrote the piece on PJ Media about my interview with Sergeant Aguina.

3. It is not true that Sergeant Aguina has anything to do with me, Michelle Malkin, or anyone else I am aware of. If I knew of a connection with the army, with any conservative or military group, I would have reported it. In fact, when I saw the woman who was walking around with him, I was sure she was some media handler from a conservative group or perhaps a veterans organization.

It was his mother. And she was there armed with one of those dictation tape recorders taping every word that Andrew, I, and her son was saying - obviously concerned that her son would be misquoted.

PJ Media videographer Andrew Marcus and I were in the giant Foyer where hundreds of other YearlyKos attendees were milling about when Andrew saw Aguina walking toward the fountain. Andrew knew who he was because he had briefly interviewed him the day before right after his tete a tete with Soltz.

And that’s the story. No conspiracy. No plot to disrupt YearlyKos (Why would we want to do that? We want to be invited back!) No black helicpoters circling McCormick Center.

Aren’t you disappointed?

UPDATE III: AGUINA’S SERVICE CONFIRMED

I just got off the phone with David Aguina. He is sending PJ Media his overseas deployment record and reservists contract. So much for the qualifiers about him being in Iraq.

The votes are in from this week’s Watchers Council vote and the winner in the Council category is yours truly for my post “Little Noted But Long Remembered.” Finishing in a tie for second was “Russia Vs. The US: No Contest” by Cheat Seeking Missiles and “Boy, Was Thomas Right” by The Colossus of Rhodey.

Finishing first in the non council category was “ON THE FRONTLINE / Cpl. JOHN MATTHEW BISHOP: In the Shadows of Fallen Comrades” from The Atlanta Journal Constitution.

Everyone else is writing about the article in the New York Times by O’Hanlon and Pollack so I might as well throw my two cents in as well.

O’Hanlon you might recall is the Brookings Fellow who advocates a “soft partition” of Iraq into Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish areas. In this scenario, our boys would be like traffic cops, herding the hundreds of thousands of refugees kicked out of their ancestoral homes and foced by this “soft partition” to move to their designated sectarian area.

Pollack is an equally blooded academic who has been a supporter of our efforts in Iraq since the beginning.

They make news today because they believe “sustainable stability” in Iraq is a possibility:

Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.

Now there’s a battle cry for you: “Forward to ‘Sustainable Stability!” I actually liked the Baker-Hamilton rouser “We must find some way to Mitigate Defeat!” Has more of a ring to it, don’t you think?

If we are not going to ask men to die for victory, time to change the broken record being played by Bush and others and let the Iraqis die for it. It’s their country. Let it be their victory.

Let me re-iterate what I have said a million times here; the surge is going well. We are making excellent progress. Our men are performing brilliantly in all facets of this multi-pronged strategy - military, diplomatic, reconstruction, and political. The Iraqi army is lagging somewhat but signs of progress are there as well.

But the National Police remain a cesspool of corruption and sectarianism. Shia and Sunni death squads are still chalking up a significant body count in Baghdad - at least 20 deaths are attributed to one or the other every day. The low intensity Shia on Shia civil war in the south continues. The borders with Iran and Syria still resemble swiss cheese, thus supplying al-Qaeda with fresh cannon fodder for our boys and the Sunni insurgents with arms.

Up north, the Kurdish terrorists of the PPK are driving Ankara nuts with the danger of an invasion by the Turks growing not receding. Also in the north, the disease of suicide bombings has broken out in places like Mosul where previously, there was peace. Kirkuk could very well be the next flashpoint as that vital oil center is seeing an increase in militia attacks, sectarian murders, and the inevitable revenge killings.

(Note: I ain’t making this stuff up.)

This is the tip of the iceberg of course. So much more is going on beneath the surface in Iraq. The shattered national polity will not grow back on its own. And few are making an effort to heal the breaches in Iraqi society.

Among those who count - Prime Minister Maliki’s cabinet and the legislature - there is even less movement and desire to affect a reconcilation with the rest of the country.

We can kill al-Qaeda till the cows come home. We can arm the Sunnis to fight the terrorists (hoping to God those guns aren’t turned on us in the future) as well as defend themselves from Shia depradations. We can keep a lid on most of the death squads and militias. But the hard slogging work of actually building a country out of the mess we and the Iraqis themselves have made there is not our job. It can’t be. And until the Iraqis decide to stop killing each other and begin talking, all of our wonderful and courageous efforts in the field will be for naught.

If the best we can hope for at this point is “sustainable stability” - and I doubt that this is really possible on a nationwide scale - then it’s time to change the plan to reflect that reality. There is no military victory to be had. If Bush and the rest of you believe that, I might ask victory against who? Against what? To what end?

I wish it weren’t so. But if we are to save Iraq when the political consensus collapses in September, it’s time for Bush to get busy and deal with the Democrats - at least the ones still willing to listen. Otherwise, it will become a disaster.