Do you understand the timing of all this agitation about Iraq? Yes, it is "an eerie repetition of the prelude to the Iraq war," as Steven Weisman says in The New York Times, but what we're getting right now is an "eerie repetition" of the summer of '03 -- the period just before the full-scale rollout of the campaign to sell the war. That was timed for the midterm elections, which were a couple of months away -- what is this timed for? Are the Bushies planning to threaten Democrats in the new Congress with the treason card as a way of making sure they don't block far-right judges and Social Security privatization? And if so, aren't circumstances a bit different right now? Back then there was a lot of unfinished business in Afghanistan, but it wasn't a quagmire; right now, Iraq is a quagmire. Can Republicans accuse Democrats of not having the stomach to fight a new war when it's obvious to everyone that there just aren't enough troops to spare for that war? Or do the Bush people really believe that they'll be able to withdraw large numbers of troops from Iraq any month now?