Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

One more year in Iraq. Capped with the ignominious hanging of Saddam. The Great Hero of Crawford and the Glabrous Cheney may rejoice in their mission to destabilize the entire Middle East—for Israel, for oil, for the arms industry, and for an expansion of executive power—but the concomitant prospect for the United States of a military debacle increases geometrically each day. Responsible men and women, who bear the brunt of our leaders' scams, still haven't figured out how to switch the machinery off. Perhaps the most important thing to bear in mind for the New Year is that the longer the US stays in Iraq the more difficult it'll be to get out. There's no victory to be had; but we still can choose among many flavors of defeat.