A small patch of turbulence in Iraq.

Things are going swimmingly in Iraq. Yup, everything is back to normal after the mosque bombing last week in Samarra and the Iraqis are all one big family again. This is what I've been hearing in the media so far this week. (Particularly from Ed Wong of the NYT last night on NewHour.) Of course, the reprisal violence today killing 56 and injuring scores of others, is just business as usual. The fact that bodies are popping up all over the place with their hands tied and bullets in the back of their heads is par for the course. If the Baghdad morgue is turning away corpses because its maxed out, this simply means that W.'s plan for victory is back on tract. As Condi said this week, "Every time there's a patch of turbulence, someone writes it's all over." You know, she's right, stop being so pessimistic liberal media. Just because an estimated 1,300 Iraqis died last week in this little "patch of turbulence" doesn't mean the whole country is going up in flames. One should always expect a little "untidyness,"as Rummy called it, in the march of democracy.

U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad did his best impression of former Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri by saying all this trouble will inspire Iraqi politicians to try harder to form a government of national unity. "I believe that they do not have a better alternative." (I want whatever he's smoking, it must be some good stuff.) How he comes to the conclusion that this massive rip that's been torn in the fabric of Iraqi society could turn out to be a good thing is beyond me. The Badr brigade and the Medhi army have their marching orders now and a call for the disbanding of the militias is going to go nowhere. The very idea is absurd. Who is going to disarm them, us? We tried that before with the Medhi army, it didn't work. My assumption is this "lull" in the fighting is just the calm before the real storm. And when things get ramped up again, what are we going to do? We either send in the troops to try and separate the combatants or we pull back into our bases and let them duke it out. I wish we had another alternative, but I don't know what it is.

Oh, right, withdrawal! But wait, Dick "Shotgun" Cheney has emerged from his lair to challenge those who would say we should leave. "Here in Washington, if any believe Americans should suddenly withdraw from Iraq and stop fighting al-Qaida in the very place they have gathered, let them say so clearly." Of course, the reason they're gathered in Iraq in the firsts place is because we're there. Rumor has it that if we didn't present such a big target for them they wouldn't have a reason to be there.

But then they might all move over the Saudi Arabia, so we'd better just hunker down in Iraq and keep that from happening.

See my post on W.s Inida trip here.