That first night we also announced that Shock ‘n’ Awe had, not certainly, but almost positively probably killed Saddam Hussein in his golden bed. A tell like that costs you your pants elsewhere.

Then, for no fucking military reason whatsoever, we managed to outrun our supply lines on Day Two, but, fortunately, PFC Jessica Lynch, the Pat Tillman of Iraq*, single-handedly wiped out a battalion, or something.

Then we took Baghdad, and realized we’d only brought enough MPs to guard the Oil Ministry. Fortunately, Don Rumsfeld was there to explain to us that that’s how it goes.

Slate is a sort of fractal of the facile and the disingenuous, from its smallest headline teases to its very raison d’être; the phrase If there was any need for Slate it wouldn’t exist seemed to stretch the boundaries of my skull like some virtual underground sea, and I swerved to find the keyboard when the phone rang.