I have become uncomfortably numb

By Libby

Some days I just can't take it anymore. This whole occupation has become such a nightmare. I just want to wake up and find out it was really just a bad dream. Bush isn't really president. Cheney was never born. Karl Rove is just a stray scrap of unresolved inner conflict that haunts my sleep. But it's all too horrible and real and I tire of trying to make sense of the senseless.

The surge was sold as a temporary burst of manpower to bring security to the city of Baghdad. But it's not a surge, it's a trickle. No, it's not even a trickle. It's just a trick. A sleight of hand, shuffling the troops like playing cards pulled from a magician's sleeve. Deployments are extended. Sign up for the Air Force at home, but end up in the Army doing convoy duty in Iraq.

The anniversary march last week that the wingnuts dismissed and the press reported as in the thousands was really eight miles long. There were a million Iraqis who put aside their tribal loyalties and carried only their national flag, shouting "Yankee go Home." It was Sadr's rally but Sunnis headed the march. In the end, Sadr and Sistani may well unite the Sunni and Shia under the umbrella of nationalism and take the prize we fought to win right out of our hands.

And the people just keep on dying. Every day, a new round of death but the accounts never differ. I find myself checking the date to be certain I'm not reading last week's news. I can't even comprehend the numbers anymore. Call me a defeatist, because today I feel defeated by the enormity of the problem to the point of insensibility. I just want it to be over.