For those who hate democracy, false hope springs eternal. But the fact is the fundamental equations have changed. It's better to be the boot than the muck these days. We keep draining the swamps one by one: Taliban dethroned, Saddam dethroned, Qadaffi and Musharraf being very cooperative, and no 9/11 repeats on our soil going on three years now.

Meanwhile in Iraq, we've got al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and the surviving Baathists all in one place, fighting in a place of our choosing and on our terms. And they're dying by the hundreds. "Flypaper" they call it. I call it a roach motel.

Meanwhile on the home front, Richard Clarke's lies and distortions are going the way of all the previous lies and distortions. (But what does he care? He's only in it to sell books.) Hot Air America is off to a very shaky start. John F Kerry seems to be doing well right now, then then so did Howard Dean at one point. Plus the job situation is beginning to improve at an inconvenient time.

It's only a quagmire for those who keep yelling "quagmire!" every time there's a spike in the violence. Do that enough times and you start to look really really silly. "Opportunistic defeatism" is the phrase someone coined for this strange mixture of schadenfreude and wishful thinking. Chicken Little had nothing on you.

Meanwhile, if you want to see a *real* quagmire, look at the UN in Kosovo.