What is the end game? We have made it absolutely clear to the Iraqis that they don't have a blank check to delay their reconciliation. Yet ... we're offering them a blank check, are we not?

I think there are no good choices here, that our invasion unleashed forces that will have to play themselves out. Best thing we can do, I think, is to withdraw to enclaves and set up refugee zones, and let the violence play itself out. And offer passports to all Iraqis who helped us, and who would certainly be killed for that after we left. Not a good response, I know. But we cannot keep this status quo up indefinitely. One way or another, the blood of Iraqis will stain our nation. If I thought staying there indefinitely was not only possible, but would fix the problem and redeem our invasion, I would support it. But I just can't see that happening.

Let's recap: The lawmakers pushing this sin tax don't believe strip-club goers actually contribute to sexual violence, just that they objectify women by watching them dance topless. So, the reasoning goes, they should help fund sexual assault programs, since they have -- what? -- furthered the devaluing of women as human beings within our culture by treating them as sex objects (or supporting a business that does). If that's seriously the argument being made here, applied consistently, the question isn't who would be taxed but who wouldn't?

For the past year, the GOP has laid the groundwork to enlist Petraeus as its standard-bearer in the fairly likely event that the party loses in November to Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. You read it here first. Plant your lawn signs now. Petraeus 2012: Surging to the White House.

In the event of a Republican loss in November, the party will have to come to terms with the legacy of the war. The most politically advantageous way of doing that will be to draft a symbol of the Iraq war as it might have been: engineered and executed not by the hidebound ideologues and incompetents of the Bush administration, but by a nimble, dexterous warrior-scholar. It's true that John McCain has made the surgenik critique of the war for a long time. But it's a whole new political world when articulated by the man responsible -- in the media's imagination, at least -- with the war's belated redemption.