Submitted by Scott Baker, Aug 1, 2007 11:11

Today, the Sunni block abandoned its position in the Iraq "government" - I use the term loosely, because they have been chronically unable to form a quorum needed to enact legislation for over a year, let alonew enforce any legislation they might pass. The only thing that's happened recently is Patreous has allowed the local militias to control their own areas and help hunt down Al-Qaeda in their spare time. This is basically handing the problem of managing the-country-formerly-known-as-Iraq over to the militias, while we watch, and should have been done long ago. Getting a country out of this mix will be another matter. The fact is we've defined down success to the point where just getting out while there's a reduction in blowing-up and shooting will be taken as victory.

As for the economy, have you checked the stock market lately? It seems the leverage/debt economy is looking a little peaked. It's too bad Bush can't see that spending some of the money at home on energy independence would have a much better payoff than using the American octopus to attempt to force apart the warring factions in Iraq. The sad truth is, we just don't have that many Arms.

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