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...cannot be human.

Did we hear correctly?

Are they now claiming the War in Iraq was a step in the battle against Iranian terrorism?

Invading Saddam Hussein's Iraq and leaving its infrastructure in shambles and its society just short of all-out civil war is now supposedly part of the struggle against Iran?

Welcome, Poor Readers, to Republican/Mainstream Media Bizarro World.

Hussein was a significant check against Iran; in fact he was our boy for the job for decades. After Iran's fundamentalist Islamists tossed out our puppet the Shah, Hussein became the primary check against any regional increase in Iran's influence. Removing him not only pulled the cork out of the bottle of sectarian violence in Iraq, it cleared the way for increased Iranian influence in Iraq and across the Middle East, leading directly to the dramatic escalation of activity by Hezbollah, radical Shia militias, and Hamas that we're now witnessing.

Invading Iraq was actually a step towards fighting Iran? Really? What happened to the "democratization" of Iraq? Or to the liberation of the Iraqi people?

Sadly, the next line of hooey will undoubtedly be that we intend to bring "democratization" and liberation to the Iranian people. Which will be even less effective there than it has in Iraq. Or Afghanistan.

The truth, of course, is much simpler, as it usually is: the Bush Administration's goal from the beginning in the Middle East was the intentional destabilization of Arab nations. Not democratization, not freedom, not economic salvation -- but crippling destabilization. On purpose.

No other explanation makes sense. No one, not even the neocons in the Bush Administration, could possibly have believed that the U.S. could bring stability and "democratization" to Iraq's disparate and warring factions after toppling Hussein. It certainly was not going to happen using the troop numbers with which Donald Rumsfeld undertook the operation, nor without the assistance of the U.N. In fact, it may not have been possible at all, even if Americans had been honestly made aware of the monumental effort it would take. Which they weren't.

Yet now we are to believe that they believe we have the means to invade and transform Iran? While still bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq? With a volunteer army of increasingly tired and disillusioned troops?

They can't possibly believe that. Well, George Bush might, but no one else -- not even Sean Hannity -- could. It's simply not possible.

The best we could hope to do is topple the Iranian government, leaving it and the country in the same state as Iraq: in lawless disarray. We surely do not have the means to control, let alone transform, Iran's society and government. We can't do it in Iraq, a country with a long secular tradition -- how could we possibly do it in a fundamentalist Islamic theocracy?

Saddam Hussein kept the "peace" in Iraq at the point of a gun; he was a brutal, murdering dictator who viciously suppressed any dissent or revolt. Americans -- at least most of us -- were never prepared to do that in Iraq. In fact, most Americans were never made aware, really, that we would be in the position of having to consider it. Though the Bush Adminiatration surely knew the reality of the place, no matter what they now claim they knew.

And if we were never prepared to do it in Iraq, a country with a significant moderate population, a country controlled by secular Sunni's (until we toppled Saddam, and the Iranian-influenced Shia majority took to the streets) how could we ever expect to control Iran, a Shia-controlled Islamic theocracy?

The answer is, we don't.

It's time for Americans to understand what the goal of the Bush Administration has been all along, and recognize what our government is doing in our name: it isn't to save, liberate, or uplift poor Arab nations living under totalitarianism in order to improve their condition and create a more modern and stable region around Israel: it's to cripple those nations and their people, utterly, and leave them in shambles, possibly forever.

No other explanation is possible.

This strategy may well succeed, and it may prove most profitable and advantageous for some.

But the rest of us need to consider what it will mean for everyone else. Because those of us who don't travel in bullet-proof limousines will be living in a world in which millions and millions and millions of people live in desperate, hopeless poverty and perpetual warfare -- and blame us for it.

[Note: We wrote this blog entry before reading Frank Rich in today's NY Times (subscription only). We're flattered to think we're on roughly the same page as Mr. Rich, though we stand by our assertion that the debacle in Iraq is intentional, and not, as he suggests, a matter of indifference and incompetence. Though we may be underestimating him, in that he leaves unclear what he calls the "grandiose political and ideological ambitions" of "the war's architects". ]

Well, you can take it from us: while having dinner in a sushi restaurant, the last thing you want to hear is the health inspector giving her report to the owner's daughter.

Even if it's a good report, you just don't want to hear phrases like, "parts per million" and "your comprehensive pest-control plan" while eating anything -- let alone sushi.

We imagine the only thing the daughter will enjoy hearing less is her mother, when the elder woman finds out her daughter let the inspector -- whose voice would give Ethel Merman's a run for its money -- give her report in the middle of the restaurant at 5pm on a Friday night. To say it gave a roomful of diners pause is an understatement along the lines of "the War in Iraq may not be going as well as Dick Cheney predicted."

The saki helped us through the ordeal.

Seen on the back windshield of a car on our way home from Rural Vacationland:

"Bad Ass Boys Drive Bad Ass Toys"

It was on a Chevy Cavalier.

Seriously.

According to the 30-ish guy at the local liquor store, global warming is a crock because, as everyone learned in school, rain runs into rivers and streams and eventually gets to the ocean, so duh, of course they'd rise.

So there you go. And we'd been so worried.

In case you're wondering how this came up during a purchase, it's because Mrs. 201k was carrying a can of hornet spray, and the guy commented on how many hornets there were this year, then volunteered that "they'll probably blame that on global warming, too".

So, congrats to Rush and all the others out there dutifully (and no doubt lucratively) spreading the gospel according to Exxon -- the message is getting out.

Though one wonders how long the success of the campaign will last, given that it's dwindled down to the point where it only tricks the people who don't know how rain works.

201k and family are on vacation, typing dutifully with our toes in the water, in a place so rural that even the local toddlers have sidearms. So The Terrorists won't be stealing any candy around here.

We city mice were surprised to see that many of the men in the area have very short hair and handlebar mustaches but seemingly aren't gay. Very strange. With slightly shorter shorts they'd look perfectly in place down in Ptown. America is indeed a land of contrasts.

With no other choice we had breakfast at McDonald's this morning. When asked by Mrs. 201k if they had pancakes -- because there were none on the menu -- the teenager behind the counter said, "No -- we only have hotcakes".

Someone sent us this Ellis Weiner Huffington post today.

Quite a bit of it struck us as familiar.

What do you think?

Ok, well this is something we never thought we'd have to clarify.

It's been brought to our attention that a song called, "I'm Praying for George Bush (to Die)" has recently been played on talk radio and mentioned in blogs and online forums. It's also shown up in UK on the bootleg mix-up "Dead Horse" by Cassetteboy.

For whatever reason, people seem to think it was done by Insane Clown Posse or a singer named Todd Snider. It wasn't.

"I'm Praying for George Bush (to Die)" was written and performed by singer/songwriter Mike Barry of the Boston band Super Genius. It was recorded live in 1998 or 1999 at the old Kendall Cafe in Cambridge, MA. It was uploaded to a server and linked to by the now-defunct political website "Mediawhoresonline", and has since apparently made its way around.

It was never intended for public release. For what it's worth, the song is indeed copyrighted.

We have this on good authority.

Let's see:

Without any evidence that we know of, the Bush Administration and the press spoke and acted under the presumption that Osama bin Laden had been responsible for 9/11. Subsequently bin Laden made remarks in which he sort of took credit for it.

Then, without any honest evidence, the Bush Administration and the press suggested that Saddam Hussein was a terrorist threat, and invaded Iraq and toppled him -- after which most if not all of their stated reasons were revealed to be false -- and after which terrorists swarmed into Iraq, which subsequently broke into the open sectarian fighting which continues to this day.

Then, without any evidence that we can find anywhere -- and we've looked -- the Bush Administration and the press began to refer to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as bin Laden's top al-Qaeda operative in Iraq, after which bin Laden and al-Zarqawi acknowledged each other seemingly for the first time. Prior to this they were at best unaware of each other, at worst rivals, and al-Zarqawi was known as a small-time "Syrian terrorist" with no ties to al-Qaeda.

Then the US killed al-Zarqawi and the Bush Administration and the press claimed that by doing so we'd struck a mighty blow against al-Qaeda.

Then the press announced that the Bush Administration had disbanded the CIA unit charged with capturing Osama bin Laden a year ago.

Do we have this about right?