gee, almost forgot

...in all of my 'feel-good consumerism,' that today it's been four years since the beginning of the war in iraq. we are pretty comfortable here in the Homeland; it's too easy for us all to lose track of how long the war has been going on, and just how bad it has been.

the lead story in the times this morning has the grimly absurd headline "sunni militants disrupt plan to calm baghdad." as if they'd all sat down and agreed that, ok, Plan to Calm Baghdad is now in effect -- and then somebody up and said, naw, i really prefer shooting. but i suppose that that sort of tone (whether picked up by the nyt or not) is what's been afflicting this endeavor from the beginning: some bush administration dude in a comfy chair makes a "plan," but has confused the word "plan" with the rather different phrase "statement of preferred outcome." as most of us learned in preschool, just about anything in the world can "disrupt" that sort of "plan."

in any case, lots of different plans have been disrupted over the last four years. everything and nothing has happened, and while americans are finally pissed off, i'm not sure we got mad soon enough to salvage much of anything.