Mark this date

When the history of the disaster that is our intervention in Iraq is written fifty years from now, this may well be marked as the moment at which the bed became irrevocably non-unshittable:

Shiites Say U.S. Is Pressuring Iraqi Leader to Step Aside - New York Times

BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 28 — Senior Shiite politicians said today that the American ambassador has told Shiite officials to inform the Iraqi prime minister that President Bush does not want him to remain the country's leader in the next government.

Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari holding a news conference last week in Baghdad, Iraq. It is the first time the Americans have directly intervened in the furious debate over the country's top job, the politicians said, and it is inflaming tensions between the Americans and some Shiite leaders.

The ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, told the head of the main Shiite political bloc at a meeting last Saturday to pass a "personal message from President Bush" on to the prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, who the Shiites insist should stay in his post for four more years, said Redha Jowad Taki, a Shiite politician and member of Parliament who was at the meeting.

Ambassador Khalilzad said that President Bush "doesn't want, doesn't support, doesn't accept" Mr. Jaafari to be the next prime minister, according to Mr. Taki, a senior aide to Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, the head of the Shiite bloc. It was the first "clear and direct message" from the Americans on the issue of the candidate for prime minister, Mr. Taki said.

The fact that these idiots can simultaneously (a) claim that the reason we started the war was to bring democracy to Iraq, (b) that we are winning that war and that democracy is flowering there and (c) tell our designated Pinochio that he isn't a real boy, and should clear out because he no longer pleases his REAL master is... well, words fail me. It is such a spectacular display of hubris, insanity, and just plain stupidity that my well of outrage is unequal to the task.

Dubya and crew think Jaafari needs us. I suspect the opposite is closer to the truth. A full-scale, unambiguous civil war is his to make, and I suspect we just took away his last reason for avoiding it.

One of the corollaries to Murphy's Law is that nothing is ever so bad that it can't get worse. Iraq, thanks to our administration's epic stupidity, etc., is about to get a lot worse.