Just another day in the life and death of Iraq

It's quite amazing, isn't it? We get caught up debating the meanings of "civil" and "war" and whether or not they belong together in terms of Iraq's sectarian violence, euphemistically speaking, and many on the right, all those head-up-the-ass conservatives who believe that all is for the best in the best of all possible preemptive invasions justified on the basis of politicized intelligence, trumped-up threats, and a manipulated culture of fear, all those who buy into the propaganda or who willingly spew it, believing it as they do so, yes, many on the right can't even distinguish fantasy from reality, either ignoring reality or filtering it through their hyperpartisan lenses.

It's going well, they tell us. The media have it wrong.

But then we have these three lovely stories from what we shall henceforth refer as A Day in the Life and Death of Iraq:

-- The New York Times:

• "American and Iraqi government forces clashed with Shiite militiamen in Baghdad tonight in the most serious confrontation in months, and Iraqi officials said the fighting left at least 17 Iraqis dead, including an 80-year-old imam";
• "Earlier this evening, the bodies of 30 beheaded men were found on a main highway near Baquba, providing more evidence that the death squads in Iraq are operating out of control... The discovery of the 30 beheaded bodies, as well as the corpses of 10 other men found in Baghdad added to the hundreds of bodies that have recently surfaced on Baghdad's streets"; and
• "Elsewhere today, a Kurdish writer was sentenced to a year and a half in jail for criticizing Kurdish leaders. The writer, Kamal Karim, had published articles on a Kurdish Web site accusing one of the most powerful men in Kurdistan, Masoud Barzani, of corruption."

-- The Washington Post:

• "A doctor has admitted killing at least 35 Iraqi police officers and army soldiers by giving them lethal injections, reopening their wounds or engaging in other deadly acts while they were being treated at a hospital in the northern city of Kirkuk, according to Kurdish security sources and Kurdish television."

Yes, just another day in Iraq. There will be many more. Not that those with their heads up their asses will see any of it through the fog of fantasy.