“I foresee an inexorable decline in the polls as Americans discover to their horror that, given the right to choose their leaders, Iraqis will choose the same sort of fundamentalist madmen that their neighbors in Iran tend to choose …

“Worse, this is likely to come at a time when the special prosecutor in the Valerie Plame case releases his indictments. If Patrick Fitzgerald wants to be a real SOB — and that seems to be his sole purpose in life — he could quite easily indict at least two of Bush’s key advisers for violating their oaths concerning the handling of classified information.

“If that scenario is not bleak enough for you, consider oil prices. They could keep soaring as the winter heating season begins. It was the gas crisis of winter 1974 that set the sour mood for Richard Nixon’s demise that summer. Imagine $4-a-gallon gasoline prices at the same time Bush remains bogged down in Iraq while fending off the Plame prosecution.”

— Paul Mulshine