Ouch!

Once Upon A Time, Jethro bought the World's Smartest Mule from Zeke. At least that's what Zeke claimed. In particular, he claimed that the mule would plow a field by himself. Well, Jethro hitched up the mule to a plow, and the mule just stood there. So Jethro tracked down Zeke and demanded his money back. "Nope." said Zeke. "You ain't doin it right". They went back to the farm, where the mule was still at the edge of the field, hitched to the plow. Zeke picked up an axe handle, walked up to the mule, and hit it has hard as he could, right between the eyes. "MULE! PLOW!" And the mule proceeded to plow the field. "You see", said Zeke, "First you have to get his attention."

Everybody in the world is trying to get Georgie Bush's attention to let him know that invading Iraq is a Really Bad Idea. The only Iraqis who like the idea haven't been in the country in years, and think that they're the logical ones to run the place after "liberation". The military doesn't like it. The CIA doesn't like it. Our "allies" don't like it. Those who "support" us are risking their political futures -- 10% of the population of Spain, 3% of the population of Britain, 2% of the population of Italy. Folks, when you can measure the size of a protest by percentage of total population, you've got a real protest. Nothing seems to penetrate.

The latest axehandle between the eyes is the resignation of career diplomat John Brady Kiesling. His letter of resignation rips off more hide than anything I've seen from anywhere else in the antiwar camp. Will it penetrate? Probably not. (Note -- NY Times requires login. If you don't want to get your own, use nypost as both user and password.)

My own opinion is that the war's a done deal. We'll see if Georgie & company wait for the UN to debate some more; I doubt it. If the start of the war gets put off until after late March, it won't happen. We won't be able to do serious military operations after about mid April, due to the limitations of our soldiers' chem/bio protective gear -- it's simply not usable in hot weather. Everybody, of course, knows this.

We'll see what happens. It's the dark of the moon ....