Three Years In Three Games:
Game 1 - The More Things Change, the Vaguer They Become:
See if you can tell the differences between the following quotes:
President Bush in his March 20, 2004 radio address marking the first anniversary of the Iraq War: "The fall of the Iraqi dictator has removed a source of violence, aggression, and instability from the Middle East. The worst regime in the region was given way to what will soon be among the best. The demands of the United Nations were enforced, not ignored with impunity. Years of illicit weapons development by the dictator have come to an end. The Iraqi people are now receiving aid, instead of suffering under sanctions."

President Bush in his March 19, 2005 radio address marking the second anniversary of the Iraq War: "Before coalition forces arrived, Iraq was ruled by a dictatorship that murdered its own citizens, threatened its neighbors, and defied the world. We knew of Saddam Hussein's record of aggression and support for terror. We knew of his long history of pursuing, even using, weapons of mass destruction, and we know that September the 11th requires our country to think differently. We must, and we will, confront threats to America before they fully materialize."

President Bush in his March 18, 2006 radio address marking the third anniversary of the Iraq War: "The decision by the United States and our Coalition partners to remove Saddam Hussein from power was a difficult decision -- and it was the right decision. America and the world are safer today without Saddam Hussein in power. He is no longer oppressing the Iraqi people, sponsoring terror, and threatening the world. He is now being tried for his crimes, and over 25 million Iraqis now live in freedom."

Can you spot the differences?

Game 2 - Top the Rumsfeld:
In yesterday's Washington Post, Secretary of (putative) Defense Donald Rumsfeld declared that Iraq was going jim-spankin'-dandy, saying, unironically, that the majority of the Iraqi people don't want violence in their streets and homes. Apparently, what the majority of the Iraqis want is important to Rumsfeld, but what the majority of Americans want is not. Such are the burdens of leadership in this crazy world, are they not?

Then Rumsfeld drags out the hyperbole feather and starts tickling his balls with it, pronouncing that "Turning our backs on postwar Iraq today would be the modern equivalent of handing postwar Germany back to the Nazis. It would be as great a disgrace as if we had asked the liberated nations of Eastern Europe to return to Soviet domination because it was too hard or too tough or we didn't have the patience to work with them as they built free countries." Others can dissect the patent absurdity of the comparisons, which are just another way to fluff this grubby little conflict into the full tumescence of a great and mighty war for right and goodness. (Oh, and, by the way, did you know we were in postwar Iraq? Strange the way that it looks like wartime Iraq.)

Instead, let's play a game the Rude Pundit likes to call "Top the Rumsfeld." Here's how it goes. Come up with a metaphor for the Iraq War that beats Rumsfeld for both absurdity and aptness. Like this:
Our staying in Iraq is like a rapist kidnapping the woman he's raped and keeping her bound and gagged, nude in a closet so he can take her out at will and rape her again, coming up with new and disgusting ways to penetrate her, and even after she's dead, he keeps raping her until she falls to pieces, after which he rapes the pieces until finally there's nothing left to stick his cock into so he just fucks the air where he wishes she still was.

See? Disturbing? Yeah. Disgusting? You fuckin' bet. So's Rumsfeld. And so's the goddamn war.

Game 3 - Which wounded Iraq War vet story is sadder?:
Is it Army Staff Sgt. John Quincy Adams who received a head injury from a bomb while on patrol in August 2003, who can't drive at all or speak well or remember some things, but "still supports the war and thinks democracy will eventually triumph in Iraq," as the former National Guardsman says?

Or is it former Army Spc. Robert Acosta, who lost his hand and had his left leg torn up from picking up a grenade that had been tossed in his Humvee, who joined Operation Truth and goes to high schools to speak against the war and against students signing up for the military; as Acosta says, "I show a video and talk to them. I try to tell them that everything the recruiters say is not true, and that there are alternatives to joining the military"?

Two men, both injured in that heady first year of war, when there was still hope for finding WMDs and the elusive Saddam/Osama connection. Which one would you choose? Who is it easier for? The one who believes he was injured for something good? Or the one who is trying to stop others from being injured or killed?

Don't worry. We'll be able to return to these games, these conundrums, next year.