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Whew... This won't make Sen. McCain very happy, now will it?

I'm glad to see we're finally going to get realistic about this asinine war. Sending more troops would have helped in the first few weeks, but not now. How are more US troops going to put a stop to something like this:

BAGHDAD, Nov. 15 — The official spokesman for Iraq’s Shiite-led government said today that all but two of an estimated 39 people kidnapped from an education ministry office have been released, and described the brazen daylight abduction as the work of “criminal gangs” taking part in a rivalry between militias.

According to news service reports, officials of the Ministry of Higher Education insisted today that many more people had been kidnapped, and that as many as 80 hostages were still being held. They quoted the minister of higher education, Abed Thiab al-Ajili, a Sunni politician, as saying that he was stepping down from his post until the remaining hostages are freed.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, Brig. Gen. Abdul Kareem Khalaf, said that security forces were continuing to search for victims and their kidnappers, and that it was unclear how many people had been seized because no list was kept of visitors to the office building that was raided.

Also today, the American military announced the deaths of six American troops on Tuesday. Three marines and one soldier were killed in combat in Anbar province, the center of the Sunni insurgency in the country’s west, and two soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb during combat operations in northwestern Baghdad, the military said in a statement.

In other violence in Baghdad today, a car bomb detonated at a gas station near the Interior Ministry killed eight people and wounded at least 32, and a suicide bomber blew himself up at a funeral in the Dora section of Baghdad, killing three other people and wounding 12. Two members of a district council in the Yermak section of the capital were killed by gunmen, and a convoy carrying a Shiite member of Parliament, Sallamaal-Khahajafi, was attacked by gunmen who wounded one of her guards and killed a passerby. In Mosul, an Iraqi journalist and her driver were shot and killed. Gunmen set fire to the house of the secretary of the governor of Diyala province and killed the secretary’s brother and one other person.

The reality is that it is just too late to save this disaster. This isn't make believe, it is real life, and sometimes out here in the real world stories don't have happy endings. I wish that weren't true, but it is. The sooner we accept that, the better our chances will be of minimizing the lasting damage caused by this debacle.

UPDATE: More from Carpetbagger