“Nothing that happens on the ground in Iraq can turn around the fate of this war in America: not a shotgun constitution rushed to meet an arbitrary deadline, not another Iraqi election, not higher terrorist body counts, not another battle for Falluja (where insurgents may again regroup, The Los Angeles Times reported last week). A citizenry that was asked to accept tax cuts, not sacrifice, at the war’s inception is hardly in the mood to start sacrificing now. There will be neither the volunteers nor the money required to field the wholesale additional American troops that might bolster the security situation in Iraq.”

— Frank Rich in the New York Times

“An Iranian-backed network of insurgents in Iraq is responsible for a new type of lethal roadside bomb, part of plans by Tehran to influence its neighbor that began even before the U.S. invasion, Time magazine reported on Sunday. Citing a U.S. military intelligence document, the magazine said that over the past eight months, a network of insurgents led by a man named Abu Mustafa al-Sheibani had introduced bombs based on a design from the Iranian-backed Lebanese militia Hizbollah that can easily pierce battle tank armor. The document estimated that al-Sheibani’s team comprised 280 members divided into 17 bomb-making teams and death squads, Time said.”

— Reuters

Not So Coincidentally…

“President Bush’s standing with an American public anxious about Iraq and the nation’s direction is lower than that of the last two men who won re-election to the White House — Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton — at this point in their second terms.”

— Associated Press

It’s hard to imagine how conservatives can look at themselves in the mirror these days. Their knee jerk reaction to any criticism of their Dear Leader – who is by far the worst president in United States history – is to change the subject away from the substance of the criticism by sliming the critic, no matter who it is.

But can they take this too far? Sure. Will they? Absolutely. Have they crossed the line by sliming Cindy Sheehan, the liberal activist “Peace Mom?” It’s too soon to say. But the sliming of Cindy has certainly begun.

It started on Thursday, when Fred Barnes, editor of The Weekly Standard – and the biggest jerk and rightwing tool on the public stage now that Robert Novak has been sidelined – described Sheehan as a “kook.”

If she is, Fred, what are you?

And there’s more…

John Podhoretz called her protest “political theater” [in] National Review’s blog, The Corner.

This morning, the Drudge Report posted a banner headline, claiming “BUSH PROTESTING MOM CALLS FOR ‘ISRAEL OUT OF PALESTINE’; VOWS NOT TO PAY TAXES.”

And conservative columnist and blogger Michelle Malkin put up an “unconfirmed report” that Sheehan’s husband, Patrick, had filed for a divorce.

We have a problem. We have a black cloud over our head, a shadow over our conscience, and a question mark over our future. Iraq is sucking the joy, the spirit, the courage out of us.

I bet you’re like me. When you get pissed off about the traffic and your idiot fellow drivers and long check-out lines and people who seem to be taking out a mortgage instead of twenty bucks at the ATM, a little voice in your head says, “Yeah, but at least I have electricity. At least I can buy stuff. At least I can drive down the road without bombs going off.” And like me, you feel more guilt than gratitude.

I work part-time at UPS. One of the drivers and I have a thing, a fun thing, where we pretend to be boyfriend and girlfriend. Vince is black and at least 10 years younger than my 40-something white self. If I look nice one day, instead of just saying, “You look nice today,” Vince says, “Baby! Did you wear that for me?” and I assure him I did. When I rag him about an irate customer and her petulant demands, he cuts me off and asks, “I’ll see you at the house later, right Shorty?” and I assure him he will.

We kicked off our friendship when I was unknowingly the third person to message him about the same annoying thing on a bad day and he called me from the road to tell me exactly how much I pissed him off. After he hung up on me, I found out he was right to be indignant and messaged him my regret. In the meantime, he thought about it too and reached the same conclusion, but in reverse, so when he came in that night he apologized to me for, “getting all Army on your ass.” I asked him what that meant.

Vince has already been to Iraq once, at the start of this mess. That should have been enough, but he spent three weeks in Georgia in July training for redeployment. He knows this is the deal he made. Vince has two years to go before he has his 20 years in. His little girl just turned 4, and from the pictures he’s so proud to show, is the spitting image of her dad, only prettier. His partner doesn’t want him to go back but knows she can no more end his service than his annual Kentucky Derby bets.

I don’t want Vince to go back. I don’t want anyone to go. I don’t want one more single, solitary person to go. It hurts to even think about it.

I want Iraq to just stop. I flinch when a 38-year-old guy in the reserves, like Vince, is killed because I know he’s got a family, a community, a good life in progress. The picture on the news of the just-killed 19-year-old hayseed with a grim expression posed in front of the flag makes me imagine the parents somewhere who never saw this coming, never thought he’d die after all the hard work of raising him was just easing off. The dead female soldiers – who smile radiantly in their pictures no matter what their age, young mothers or not – are especially hard. And it’s just too painful to think about the vast Iraqi death toll.

But we do contemplate it, all of it. Somewhere deep inside we know it’s happening RIGHT NOW, and we think about it. It’s a weight around our hearts, pulling us down, and hurting, hurting, hurting. Cindy Sheehan reminds us of this hurt. President Bush ignores it, goes on about his dude ranch holiday, puts one foot in front of the other, head down. But we know. We know.