Well, I�m glad we got that all sorted out.

Turns out the Iraqi people cast their ballots for a unified and democratic nation. It was quite the stunning achievement. Especially since Shi�ites and Kurds made up 95 percent of the voting population, and, not unexpectedly, elected a government that was Shi�ite with one or two Kurds tossed in for garnish.

Those bad, bad Sunnis didn�t like that, and didn�t appreciate all George had done for them (we apparently did Iraq a massive favor by invading them, overthrowing their government and occupying them for almost four years now) and blew up the Golden Mosque of Samarra.

Oops. Turned out the Shi�ites weren�t as keen on unity and democracy as the administration thought. I kind of figured that one out using just third-grade reading and geography skills, but it was a surprise to Putsch. With so many Americans working so hard at Abu Ghraib and Haditha, one might have thought they would have instilled some good Christian values into those heathens.

Well, blood will out. The Vietnamese seemed to grasp the idea of democracy easily enough, but they never could get a grasp on how important it was to have a democracy that voted the way Americans wanted. And what that bad decision cost them over the following 15 years! Oh, my. But we saved millions of Vietnamese from communism by killing them first, so you can�t say America wasn�t the good guy in all that.

But George, whose beneficence is unending, vows to keep on doing the Iraqis a massive favor by continuing the occupation. Only now, he�s got a brand new plan, Stan!

He�s going to take 21,000 American troops who don�t exist, and embed them in 18 non-existent Iraqi Army and Navy brigades, and that should be enough to utterly and permanently control a city of 6 million people, most of whom hate Americans.

Of course. we�re talking about a few �narrow enclaves� Just a few alleyways, really. Well, okay, a few thousand alleyways where dumb tourists wander and either get sold into slavery, turned into harem guards, or buy a monkey�s paw which proceeds to get large portions of said tourist home safely. These aren�t the type of alleyways romanticized in the old movies.

Just because the resistance has the strong support of about 70 percent of Baghdad�s population doesn�t mean that the resistance can�t move to other neighborhoods. And even though Prime Minister Maliki has pledged �that political or sectarian interference will not be tolerated,� I suspect that he�ll be just a bit less tolerant of Sunni groups than of Shi�ite ones. George believed that, of course, but then, George didn�t even know there were two types of Moslems when he attacked Iraq.

First thing cops learn when answering a domestic disturbance call: don�t take sides. Especially if neither of them called the cops in the first place.

Unfortunately for George, there is a large group of Iraqis with military and police training. The trouble is that isn�t the group George has sided with. He�s sided with a group that is exacting revenge for many years of repression at the hands of a dictator seen as an American puppet, one who the Americans eventually betrayed and humiliated right up to the moment of his death.

So if he tries to get them to be nonpartisan on his behalf, he probably isn�t going to have much luck. The administration claims it tried to prevent the grotesqueries that accompanied Saddam�s death, and if they were telling the truth (unlikely), then that would just show everyone how little control they had over the genie they created with their purple fingers.

But, George tells us 9/11 shows us what happens if Iraq is overrun with terrorists. They want to follow us home, steal our freedom and liberty (not sure what they planned on doing with it), rape our women, make scary faces at our children. When 9/11 happened, of course, Iraq wasn�t overrun with terrorists, and in fact Saddam was doing a pretty good job of making them go around Iraq if the wanted to travel from Syria to Iran and back. But terrorists move quickly from neighborhood to neighborhood (except, it seems, in Baghdad) and America will always have enough troops to control a population of 2 billion in Africa and Asia.

George apparently has been smoking something felonious. In fact, he looked a tad � sedated during his speech Wednesday night.

But, as much as he�s tried to help the Iraqis, he says, �I have made it clear to the prime minister and Iraq's other leaders that America's commitment is not open-ended.� Maybe that means that if the Iraqis don�t calm down right away, Putsch is going to take his ball and go home. I�m sure that would really upset the Iraqis. Well, it might upset Maliki, whose life expectancy would drop to approximately zero should the Americans leave. There�s a REASON he lives in the American-held Green Zone.

George plans to unleash the majesty and the grandeur that is the American occupation of Iraq. According to him, �there were too many restrictions on the troops we did have� in Iraq.

I�m guessing they were limited to only two mass murders and one set of gang rapes a week. Well, no more Mr. Nice Guy for those Sunnis! Or the Shi�ites, or whoever the bad guys are. Oh, hell, they�re all Arabs anyway. Just frag �em!

George cannot admit that the biggest problem the Iraqis have is the forcible occupation of the American forces. If the Americans packed up and left today, no matter how much America had to sacrifice in the value of Halliburton stock, there�s a chance that the Iraqis could settle their differences peaceably. A slim chance, and not an immediate one, but as long as the Americans are there, and one side is seen as collaborators, there will not be peace in Iraq.

He says that the Iraqi forces have until November to bring the country under control. What he�ll do then he didn�t say, but I�m guessing it doesn�t involve leaving. But it buys him time, into the next election cycle, in his hopes that he can pull a Richard Nixon and foist this quagmire off on the next sucker. If that happens to be Hillary or Obama, well, serves them right, ha, ha, ha!

In the meantime, he�ll lead the Republicans in making sacrifices for the war with more tax cuts and greater criticism of the patriotism of critics of the occupation from the lapdogs at Faux News.

Except, I watched Faux News after the speech. Britt Hume, Chris Wallace the lessor, and a bunch of crackpot retired military retreads, and they all sounded pretty dubious about the whole thing.

Back in 1968, Lyndon Baines Johnson heard Walter Cronkite say, �In this reporter�s opinion, this war cannot be won.� Johnson leaned back and remarked to an aide, �If we�ve lost Cronkite, we�ve lost the nation.�

When George lost Faux News, he didn�t exactly lose a nation. The polls show that ship sailed two years ago. What he�s gained (or retained) is about 500,000 insanely loyal and willfully ignorant crackpots, Faux�s core viewership.

And unfortunately for George, not one of them wants to go patrol neighborhoods in Baghdad.

Not even to catch Obama. I mean Osama.