A new Iraq analogy -- via the Sleuth channel

Matt Taibbi answers some readers' questions. This one is my favorite.


Q. How long will it take for the Democrat hopefuls to realize that they cannot simply pull out of Iraq?

A. I saw an old episode of "Homicide: Life on the Street" on the Sleuth channel the other night. In it a highly annoying Vince D'Onofrio falls between a subway car and the subway platform and he gets stuck there, with the train basically holding his guts in. The medics come in and they look at him and realize that if they move the train at all, his guts are going to fall out and he's going to die. But if they do nothing, he's going to slowly lose blood pressure and die. Either way, he's going to die.

Iraq is Vince D'Onofrio. It doesn't overact as much, but it's just as fucked.

The bloodbath is coming as soon as we leave, whether that's now or 20 years from now. But I'd be interested to hear your argument explaining how things are going to improve by us staying and spending a billion bucks a day or whatever playing Play Station in air conditioned trailers behind twenty-foot walls while Iraqis have six hours of electricity and pee into buckets and get their throats slit as soon as night falls. You're probably right, a few more years of that, and this Sunni-Shia hatred thing will pass.