I’ve progressed from Franz Kafka through Joseph Heller and L. Frank Baum to a world of Lewis Carroll in my attempt check all the boxes, dot all the I’s, and cross all the T’s and return to a somewhat normal existence down here in South Fundistan.

The people who have been in very similar circumstances even a year ago are telling me that this is new, that they had none of these problems. I’m beginning to think that there is a system failure in progress, that so many people who used to do this have retired or been laid off, that those who are left just can’t handle the workload imposed on them.

Regardless, I will locate the snark and dispatch it with a snicker-snack.

The Shrubbery was brain damaged from his dissolute young adulthood, but Cheney and Powell both knew why George H.W. Bush didn’t want Saddam removed from power, and what would happen if he was. Nonetheless they went along for the march into folly that was the Iraq War.

We invade a country without sufficient forces to control huge arms depots or provide security for the population, and then don’t even bother to make the army surrender. The insurgency was guaranteed.

They listened to people who didn’t think there would be any problems between the Sunni and Shiia factions, even though the majority Shiia had been oppressed for decades.

They remove the two factors that had been holding Iran in check for years, the Taliban and Saddam, and are then surprised that Iran begins to expand its influence in the region.

The current ISIS victories in western Iraq were plain to see by anyone watching – ISIS is a Sunni faction, and the Sunnis have no real presence in the current government of Iraq. The Sunni population has no reason to support the Shiia government in Baghdad, and the Iraqi army knows it has no local support. so ISIS rolled in.

Now many of the same morons who backed the Iraq War want the US to do something. We will probably end up providing air support to the Iraqi forces because they can’t handle a brigade-size force with local support. If we don’t do it, Iran will, and Congressional Republicans will hold even more information-free, pointless investigations.