Reason Number...

Well, you could call it reason 1 or reason 1,000--either way, it's as clear as a cloudless day (not unlike yesterday afternoon in New Orleans) why Iraq is already a lost cause:

[Delgado] wasn't happy when, even before his unit left the states, a top officer made wisecracks about the soldiers heading off to Iraq to kill some ragheads and burn some turbans.

"He laughed," Mr. Delgado said, "and everybody in the unit laughed with him."

The officer's comment was a harbinger of the gratuitous violence that, according to Mr. Delgado, is routinely inflicted by American soldiers on ordinary Iraqis. He said: "Guys in my unit, particularly the younger guys, would drive by in their Humvee and shatter bottles over the heads of Iraqi civilians passing by. They'd keep a bunch of empty Coke bottles in the Humvee to break over people's heads."...

Mr. Delgado said he had witnessed incidents in which an Army sergeant lashed a group of children with a steel Humvee antenna, and a Marine corporal planted a vicious kick in the chest of a kid about 6 years old. There were many occasions, he said, when soldiers or marines would yell and curse and point their guns at Iraqis who had done nothing wrong.

He said he believes that the absence of any real understanding of Arab or Muslim culture by most G.I.'s, combined with a lack of proper training and the unrelieved tension of life in a war zone, contributes to levels of fear and rage that lead to frequent instances of unnecessary violence.

Unfortunately, I can't say I'm all that surprised by these allegations--nor will I be surprised thirty years from now (if I'm still alive) when these kinds of things are routinely denied. In addition, there will be an entire cottage industry grown up around analysis of "Iraqi veterans, many of whom are homeless, etc. etc. etc."--in other words, it will be yet another instance where Iraq is not at all like Vietnam (that's sarcasm--in case the odd wingnut stops by and reads this)--or, like any other losing effort in history.

Deep down, I think the wingnuts realize the colossal size of the pile of shit they've slid head first into--of course, their acknowledgement of that fact is done in typical style: blame others. Pat Robertson managed to go cuckoo-for-cocoapuffs in a BIG way twice over the weekend, asserting that it's judges, not terrorists who are the real problem--then turning around and fro good measure saying Muslim-Americans are not fit for higher office. And while Robertson is, as anyone who looks at him can clearly see, a nutjob of the highest order, he does carry weight with the storm troopers/footsoldiers that comprise Karl Rove's "base."

But the base can no more win the "cultural" war than they can win the war in Iraq. And, as we flounder in the Middle East, hemmorhaging lives and money, as the economy lurches along without gaining traction, while the dauphin stumbles around searching for his keys under the social security streetlight (because he can see better there), it looks like the public is finally recognizing that the driver is asleep at the wheel.

It's gonna make for a hell of a hangover...