Each day the bad news from Iraq dribbles in. An IED kills three reservists, or one marine is killed in action. We know the news is bad. However like the frog that doesn't struggle when the water is heated around him we don't get a sense of the growing intensity of the conflict. It doesn't seem like the same sort of war that we fought in Vietnam, or in Korea, or in World War II. In fact, it doesn't seem like a war at all. Where are the grand battles, the enemy armies, the complicated tactics?

When we see a list of news reports of fatalities listed day by day for months (such as the one maintained here the reality hits us like a brick. It is a war. Why are these people dying? The answer seems to be something out of a Stanley Kubrick or Terry Gilliam movie. A bureaucratic mix-up leads to an invasion based on incorrect assumptions and once the invasion has been launched and the mix-up exposed the soliders can't be called home because doing so would be political suicide in upcoming elections.

What a sad, sad world we live in.