Matt Yglesias has written a good summary of the situation in Basra. Normally this would be an excellent lead-in for me to launch into a longish post about the talk I was at this afternoon at the Brookings Institution, wherein Matt’s general analysis was repeated almost verbatim by a Marine captain, which visibly flustered Ken Pollack and Michael O’Hanlon, who were also on the panel.

Alas, I’ve only slept two hours last night, so a longer post is out of the question. I’ll try to do it tomorrow.