The existential administration continues on its merry way. Despite the fact that approximately 2/3 of Americans have lost faith in their cause and their abilities, Mr. Bush, et al insist that good days are right around the corner. Unfortunately, that corner is at the end of the longest block in the universe.

So, when Reuters published this photo of Mr. Cheney last week; it was as if someone were sending him a message. Of course it’s not just Dick Cheney who needs this message. Now that the book Cobra II has been published, we can see that there were Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Franks and Bush. And they all need to retire

When so much blood and treasure has been spent, why is it so hard to pull back from the brink? This is not to say that they have to admit error. They could say, “Okay, we toppled Saddam, there’s a Constitution, there have been elections. Now we’re leaving.” Of course they’re not because, in the meanwhile, we’ve de-stabilised the entire Middle Eastern region. Now we can’t afford to pull out entirely. Of course we could pull back to Kuwait and UAE and any other tiny Arab state that feels it can’t say no to the Uncle.

When you march into the pottery shop and break everything in sight, you need to own up to that and to leave before you do any more harm. But we have the existential administration: they are creating their own reality as they go along. Unfortunately for them, their reality is in a parallel yet alien universe from the majority of Americans and the rest of the world.

Americans are waking up to the fact that we cannot impose our culture on anyone else and, as bad as our casualties are, that many more Iraqis are paying the price for our war of choice then we are. Let’s imagine a scenario where the administration actually did believe that there were WMD. Okay, but we know that they never believed that Saddam had anything to do with 9/11. Saddam used religion only when it was convenient, and Osama bin Laden saw Saddam as apostate. It was obvious that Saddam had been placed in a corner by the combined will of the U.N. But the neo-cons had wanted to get to Baghdad since the Gulf War. And so we are there and the neo-cons are pointing fingers at one another saying, “It was his idea (and, yes, it’s an alpha male thing).

So, okay Dick look into my eyes, deep into my eyes: you will retire. You will go home to Wyoming. You will leave us in peace. Oh, and you will take the other Horsemen with you. When I snap my fingers you’ll wake up.

If only we could wake up and find that it was just a very bad dream.

Please give what you can to Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders).

And, of course