Kudos to Gen. David Petraeus for not being the trained liar Bush probably would have preferred at this week's congressional hearings. At least the general didn't spout the rightwing media's mendacious mantra of "Everything's going great in Iraq, victory is just around the corner." Here's a quick recap of Petraeus' testimony: 1. The Surge(tm) has worked! 2. But not well enough to get too excited. 3. Any progress in Iraq due to The Surge(tm) is weak and fragile, so we can't leave. Summation: At this point, there is no way to determine when we'll be able to leave; in fact, we don't even know exactly what signs we're looking for that would indicate at what point we could leave.

Read that last sentence again. That, dear readers, is the very definition of "quagmire." So who will get us out of this mess? It sure won't be The Decider(tm), who is content to dump his national disaster into the lap of the next president. Just how removed from reality has Bush become? Yesterday, Preznit Flight Suit "warned" Iran that the United States will "act to protect our interests" in the Middle East. Not once has the Chimp-in-Chief acknowledged what nearly every foreign policy expert, including those who support the war, have admitted — namely, that Bush's invasion has vastly strengthened Iran's position in the world. While Bush was wishing upon a star for democracy to bloom in the Middle East, he somehow didn't notice that he was getting rid of Iran's number one enemy, Saddam Hussein, which has allowed the Iraqis who are friendliest toward Iran, the Shiites, to flourish to the point that they now control both the Iraqi government and its main opposition (Moqtada al-Sadr). But Bush now tells the Iranians that he's going to "act to protect our interests." God help us.