I'm sorry! What did you say?

The Dallas Morning News is keeping me up late tonight. Editorials like this are precisely why I write letters to the editor that DMN promptly and consistently ignores. I'm going to reprint the entire thing here, because you have to read it to believe it.

Yesterday's mass-murder-by-car-bombing of dozens of Iraqi men lining up to be police recruits tells us something terrible about the situation there. Not only the carnage, but the targets the terrorists chose, tells us why Iraq appears to be slipping through America's fingers with each passing day.

Slipping through America's fingers? Based on what evidence? That some people got blown up?

News flash to DMN. This has been going on for...ummm..32 years. Remember Beirut? Hamburg? Lockerbie? Khobar Towers? The USS Cole? The embassy bombings? World Trade Center 1993? World Trade Centers 2001? The Pentagon? A field in Pennsylvania? Bali? Jakarta?

So why, now, is it suddenly "slipping away"? Now, when we're actually doing something about it instead of sitting on our hands and worrying about why they don't like us? Please help me understand how it is suddenly, now, "slipping away".

In recent days, guerrilla insurgents have been demonstrating to the Iraqi people that they have the power to strike almost anywhere. Their message is clear: Neither the interim Iraqi government nor the U.S. military has full control of the country.

Doesn't this imply that they once had full control of the country? When would that have been? Exactly?

The coalition troops have never had full control of Iraq. The old media has been complaining about it since the day the troops entered Baghdad and the looting began. Remember?

Worse, the terrorists are targeting those Iraqis – politicians and police recruits – who are trying to build a stable nation. These successful attacks are breaking the will of the Iraqi people by targeting their institutions. And they're working. Multiple reports yesterday from the bombing scenes in Baghdad and Baqouba told of furious Iraqis blaming not the guerrillas for their misery, but the Americans. Other recent dispatches indicate a widening loss of Iraqis' faith in the future.

Earth to DMN. We have always gotten these reports. Guess who's filing them? The AP. Reuters. NY Times.

Guess who we no longer believe.

We believe the Iraqi bloggers who tell us that 93.65% of Iraqis support the interim government. Why aren't you reporting that?

This was not the script Washington sold to the American people before the invasion. A grateful Iraq was supposed to have been well on its way to stability and democratic rule. Despite the administration's protestations last weekend that the January elections will go off as planned, it is difficult to see how ordinary Iraqis are going to stand in line outside polling places when doing so may get them blown to bits. The U.S. military and the Iraqi government have to stop the anarchy before anything else can be accomplished.

Exactly when did the administration promise the American people this? I recall President Bush saying this would be a "long war against terrorism". I remember him saying it "this war will not be quick and this war will not be easy".

It is you, the corrupt old media, that has been selling the story that this would be easy. That it wouldn't cost much. That it would be over quick. At least that's what you were telling us when you weren't promoting your other meme, that it was another Vietnam.

Yet U.S. forces are in a Catch-22 situation. If they crack down harder, they risk alienating the populace and swelling the guerrilla ranks (as has already happened). If they let up, they embolden the guerrillas. There is no clear choice. The only certainty is that letting the chaos continue is a recipe for fragmenting the country along sectarian lines, with a blood bath likely to destabilize the entire region.

I love this. "There is no clear choice" is followed immediately by we just cannot allow this to continue.

Your suggestion? Should we drop a nuke or two? Obliterate Fallujah? What exactly is your solution to this "intractable" problem?

What should Washington do now? We don't pretend to know. But we are certain that with the situation in Iraq worsening, confidence in the administration's Iraq policy is fast eroding. Let's be clear: We still believe in the broad goals Mr. Bush has for transforming Iraq and the Middle East. But we fear that unless the president tries a different strategy, the blood-dimmed tide of anarchy now loosed in Iraq will drain away the conviction of those good and decent Iraqis on whom everything depends. America cannot let that happen.

So you "don't pretend to know" yet somehow you also know that what they are doing is wrong? How interesting a position you've chosen. you get to complain without ever offering solutions. You get to criticize their actions as incorrect without even pointing out why they are incorrect. How smug of you.

Here's a suggestion. If you don't have a clue what need to be done, SHUT UP! How's that for a solution?

Bush knows what the solution is. I do too. You let the generals fight the wars. You let men who are trained to fight make the decisions, and you leave them alone. If there is one thing we should have learned from Vietnam, it is to keep the politicians' and the "experts'" noses out of it and let the military fight the war. When the war is done and the fighting is over, then the experts can come in and screw it all up.