Let me see if I've got this straight: in order to be grounded, I've got to be crazy and I must be crazy to keep flying.

I imagine you've already seen this Washington Post article outlining a pentagon summary of options in Iraq but just in case you missed it-

Pentagon review sees 3 options in Iraq

The Pentagon's closely guarded review of how to improve the situation in Iraq has outlined three basic options: Send in more troops, shrink the force but stay longer, or pull out, according to senior defense officials.

Insiders have dubbed the options "Go Big," "Go Long" and "Go Home." The group conducting the review is likely to recommend a combination of a small, short-term increase in U.S. troops and a long-term commitment to stepped-up training and advising of Iraqi forces, the officials said.

Personally I would haved dubbed the three options "Go Big," "Dogpaddle" and "Go Home" but that's just me being a silly realist. "Go Long" does imply throwing a Hail Mary pass so at least it somewhat captures the slim chance of success of what really amounts to staying the course.

Those bastards are trying to kill me.

Billmon took on the Blair/ Bush dinner fiasco yesterday where the two leaders were caught on a microphone discussing events in the Middle East from a unbelievably naive perspective-

This is fascinating as well as terrifying. It suggests that Bush and his faithful water carrier both really believe their own bullshit -- not just in terms of viewing Hezbollah and Hamas as the mindless tools of Syria and Iran, but also in their rosy-lensed assessments of how things are going in the Middle East these days.

The biggest thing I take from the exchange, and response of the United States as a whole to the growing conflict, is that this is just yet another example of the cold war mindset that the clowns running our foreign policy are stuck in. They simply cannot bring themselves to see any world event outside the influence of state actors. All the recent talk of "WW III" from Gingrich and other neocons just highlight this mindset.

It demonstrates once again why George W Bush and Tony Blair are exactly the wrong men for our time. They lack the imagination or the mindset to truly keep the us secure by dealing effectively with our true enemies: loosely organized, shadowy terrorist organizations. Their continued efforts to pound the square peg into the round hole only seeks to make things worse.

Add to that their "rosy-lensed assesment of how things are going in the Middle East," as Billmon put it, and there isn't much hope for a responsible change in course anytime soon.