Columnist William F. Buckley says the war in Iraq is lost:

One can’t doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed. The same edition of the paper quotes a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute. Mr. Reuel Marc Gerecht backed the American intervention. He now speaks of the bombing of the especially sacred Shiite mosque in Samarra and what that has precipitated in the way of revenge. He concludes that “the bombing has completely demolished” what was being attempted — to bring Sunnis into the defense and interior ministries.

If the war is indeed lost, then I’d like to know what he proposes we do. Should we abandon the country like we did in Vietnam? Leave everyone who cooperated with the coalition to their fate? Let the country devolve and destabilize further? Let the evil men run the show?

If Iraq was a patient in a hospital and you were the doctor you certainly wouldn’t say, “We’ve lost,” and go play a round of golf, at least not if you were an ethical man. I think Iraq is a lot like a very sick and delirious patient who hasn’t been properly restrained and is banging his head against the wall repeatedly. Sure, the medical team can just give up and say “nothing we’ve tried has worked.” But that would be plain wrong and the patient would eventually severely injure or kill himself. What’s your prescription, Dr. Buckley? I am over here with 130,000 others, waiting to find out.

Lately I’ve been feeling overwhelmingly fatigued. My body has been demanding a lot of sleep but even when I sleep 12 hours, my sleep isn’t deep enough to leave me feeling refreshed. Life seems to be passing in a blur, and every day blends together.

The background harmonies here are always the same. In the distance, explosions make dull thumps. Nearby, sirens wail constantly. Helicopters fly low over our hooches, vibrating me in my bed and making the roof, floor and walls shake momentarily as two or three Blackhawks fly by a few feet overhead. When you add these noises to the karoake parties that are held outdoors at night, it’s sometimes still very surreal after three months in theater.

I sleep restlessly in this place. Something is always waking me back up as soon as I drop off. Even when I am wearing my noise canceling headphones, something always shakes the hooch as I’m dropping off or going into REM sleep and forces me back into alertness. The only thing that seems to help is working out to the point of exhaustion. Once I’m sufficently drained, my body shuts down and allows me the rest I need. Despite this, I feel tired all the time. I think I’m tired of living in a sea of concrete and metal surrounded by a city that seems to be filled with madmen. I can only imagine how much worse it must be for common Iraqis.

Easy solutions and leisurely existences are a pipe dream for most people in land of the two rivers. Until Iraqis move beyond the legacy of religious strife that is their heritage the problems will continue. The power squabbles that are the backdrop for life here are a major reason for the snail’s pace at which Iraq is able to rebuild and add the basic infrastructure required for a decent quality of life.

It’s well past time for Iraqi leaders to put aside their real and petty differences and all start pulling together. It’s time to root out the evil sociopaths among the various factions so the sentences of life in Iraq will no longer have death and war as their punctuation marks. I’m ready to sleep soundly again, and I hope most Iraqis will be too in the near present future.

Iraqi Blogger’s Central has a great roundup of the Iraqi discussion of who was behind the bombing:

Perpetrator: Al-Qaeda In Iraq (aka Zarqawi/jihadis) or ex-Saddam Regime criminals (aka Saddam’s Orphans) or both (aka The Return Party).

Purpose: To start a civil war for the purpose of general mayhem in the midst of which they can jettison the Iraqi democracy as unworkable and step in as Iraq’s nationlist, unity, and security dictatorship and protector of morality.

Who believes this story: Hammorabi does:

The barbaric and savage attack on the Shire of Imam Al-Hassan Al-Askari in Samara is a continuation of the barbarism of the Saudi Wahabi terrorism, which started such destruction against the entire ancient heritage.

Five theories and the various proponents are presented for you to digest. My personal theory is a compilation of two of these - Al-Qeada in Iraq is being supported by Iranian interests and the combination of the pooled resources was used to perpatrate these recent events.

Moqtada al-Sadr took advantage of a situation that happened by saying one thing while his followers did another.

As if the world doesn’t have enough lunacy, the Irish are rioting and looting in Dublin again.

I haven’t figured out what they are fighting and looting over. I know it started with religion a long time ago but what keeps it going is a mystery to me. Must be something in the water, or something in the memes the idiot parents are passing along to the idiot kids. From Richard Delevan:

2.55 - Heading up towards Leinster House. Two Garda vans are parked on the traffic island in front of the Screen, next to Pearse Street Garda Station. One van’s windscreen has a sign’s base through it, clearly done after the van was parked here. People are queueing up to have their picture taken in front of it. At least 20 stop to take pics with their mobile phones.

So far, no one killed and no one talking about Ireland being on the brink of civil war. Maybe we can fly some of these Irish looters over to downtown Baghdad and just drop them off for a week. The survivors can then be flown back to spread better rioting memes to their ignorant lout brethren while fake American Indian professors find reasons to blame President Bush for the spread of the violence from Iraq to Ireland.

When will the circus come to your town? Hopefully never.

Read the full news story. Keep in mind, no head choppings, ransoms, bodies found tied up and shot in the head or mortars dropped in on random neighborhoods were reported. No one blew up a church either, that I am aware of or murdered priests.

Today’s honorary merchant of hope is Suzanne Nossel, because what the world needs most is hopeful thoughts like hers. Offering criticisms without offering solutions seems kind of useless to me.