Whiskey Bar has a wonderful collections of quotations from US officials grappling with the continuing armed resistance to US occupation of Iraq. They resort to semantic distinctions — is it or is it not to be called guerrilla war? combat activities or criminal activities? — to explain what for them is the unexplainable, that we are not loved by these people who are supposed to be fawning all over their liberators, defenders and promoters of democracy. It would be merely pitiful and laughable if it weren’t getting US soldiers, unprepared and misled, killed every day. Yes, I blame the US leadership as much, more, than the Iraqis doing the murdering. “We’re in it for the long haul,” a US official says, the American people have to realize. No, you’ve got to realize, the only problem you’ve got now is how to extricate yourselves from this latest “Big Muddy.”