Understatement of the year

I was flying home from Chicago the other day and happened to pause in front of four newspaper vending machines hawking the NY times, the Chicago Tribune, USA Today and one other rag the name of which I can't remember. All had nearly identical headlines: "Iraq nears civil war."

"NEARS" civil war? And what would Rummie and his ship of fools have us believe has been going on for the past year? Warm-up? And if these have just been the preliminaries, can we even imagine what is in store for Iraq during the "real thing?"

It's not just the emperor who is without clothes. It's the whole damn empire.