DEAR CLIFF MAY

When you put up a post at National Review's blog called "End of the Jihad in Iraq?," about Sunni insurgents who seem to be splitting off from al-Qaeda, you might want to tell your readers that -- according to the Guardian story you use as your source -- the only reason the insurgents are rejecting the al-Qaeda party line is that it's distracting them from their primary goal of killing as many Shiites as humanly possible.

Which is not the same as "We're winning!!!!"

(In fact, one of the Sunni insurgents quoted in the Guardian story says, "When the Americans arrive we let them go through, but if they show up with Iraqi troops, then it's a fight." Which would lead a rational person -- i.e., not Cliff May -- to ask: If these insurgents aren't jihadis, and if they target our troops only when they're with the Shiite government's army, then aren't we just, y'know, stuck in the middle of a civil war we ought to get ourselves the hell out of?)