Iraq is not Vietnam. It's much worse.

Kaplan, who supported the invasion of Iraq, says Iraq isn't Vietman, it's much worse. Also, "civil war" is too optimistic a phrase. Anarchic collapse is a better name.

So all those who raised the specter of Vietnam owe Bush an apology. We should have been raising the specter of Rwanda.

Personally, I have only a limited mental model of what's going on in Iraq. I obviously have no trust at all in our GOP government and there appear to be no reliable and uncensored information streams left in Iraq.

In the very unlikely event that the GOP loses control of the Senate, we might get some data I'd have some confidence in -- primarily senate testimony of US military command based in Iraq. In the meantime American citizenry is flying blind. All we can say is that we need to get the GOP out of the Senate and ideally out of government. If we can't do that, we can't do anything.