The Meaning of Quagmire

Schoolmaster Humphrey Williams: All right, settle down. Settle down. Now, before I begin the lesson, will those of you who are playing in the match this afternoon move your clothes down onto the lower peg immediately after lunch, before you write your letter home, if you're not getting your hair cut, unless you've got a younger brother who is going out this weekend as the guest of another boy, in which case, collect his note before lunch, put it in your letter after you've had your hair cut, and make sure he moves your clothes down onto the lower peg for you. Now,--*

See, it's really that simple:

"There are four wars going on in Iraq right now," Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has said. Turns out he underestimated it by about twenty.

From The Boston Globe:

The messianic Soldiers of Heaven militia that fought US and Iraqi troops in one of the fiercest battles of the war Sunday is among the more than two dozen extremist militias operating across Iraq that are fast becoming a powerful, and hidden, new enemy.
US officials this week expressed concern about the explosion of splinter groups in Iraq, noting that their sheer number makes a political resolution to the ongoing violence in Iraq increasingly difficult. One Defense Department official said in an interview yesterday that the military is tracking at least 28 militias, many of them Shi'ite splinter groups, but knows little about their leadership or command structure.

From Shi'ite factions in southern Iraq to Sunni groups in Anbar Province to extremist Islamic militias operating in Kurdistan, it's a dizzying array.

Oh, and the smashing victory over the forces of evil on Sunday? Maybe not so much:

There are growing suspicions in Iraq that the official story of the battle outside Najaf between a messianic Iraqi cult and the Iraqi security forces supported by the US, in which 263 people were killed and 210 wounded, is a fabrication. The heavy casualties may be evidence of an unpremeditated massacre.

No wonder wingnuttia's looking to distract with the "they spit on the soldiers and called them baby killer" nonsense. That's all they've got. Hell, if it were ONLY a case of shit literally hitting a fan at this point, that'd actually count as good news.