There has been some talk in the last few weeks about the direction of the war in Iraq. Ten guys made some suggestions (79 of them) about what could be done to turn the war around. Apparently it didn't say what the administration was hoping for. "You're doing a great job, Georgie," was nowhere to be seen in the document.

I haven't read the recommendations. I didn't read much of State of Denial by Woodward either (but I did read the excerpts in Newsweek). I didn't read the 9/11 commission's report about what happened before, during and after the attacks. I haven't seen any of the movies (TV or theatrical) about 9/11, except Fahrenheit 911. I have, like most of you reading this, lived in the US in the last seven years or so.

I can tell you that the feeling of the country has changed dramatically since those attacks over five years ago. We have become frightened little piggies. I had a pizza last night covered with different types of pork meat. It tasted good. I'm thinking the administration has been feeding on us for long enough. But we little piggies are not the hogs I'm totally disgusted with.

In Animal Farm, the pigs represent the people who eventually ran the Soviet Union. The horses, who represent the proletariat, got killed after they helped secure the revolution. The pigs joined forces with the people who owned the farm and sold out the rest of the animals. In other words, the pigs used the force of the "people" (other farm animals) to overturn the government, then they took over and shared power with the very people they had rebelled against.

There was an election here in the United States back in November. Maybe you remember reading something about it. The Democrats, seizing on the idea that a lot of people aren't happy about the war in Iraq or the President in general, took back both houses of Congress, despite not actually having a plan for much of anything. Which was, on its face, fine with me.

The reasons people vote one way or another is usually kind of thin. My reasons were, also, very thin. I didn't like who I voted for the House. Didn't relish having to vote for her again in two years if she won. And luckily, for my soul (I guess), she lost by about 850 votes. I can, once again, vote against the Republican incumbent (who I liked just a little bit less than the challenger) in two more years.

But we're talking about what to do about this war. This thing that spurred a semi-revolution in our government. This thing that made most of the media outlets decide they actually had a spine when it came to handling and covering the administration. We went through almost six years of no oversight by anyone (the congress, the media), and now everyone is saying we gotta change what we're doing.

It's true, we need to change what we're doing, because what we're doing isn't working. It hasn't been working. The only time it was working was the easy part: toppling a third world government and army (interestingly, we had pretty much done this before in the early 90s). But we've never learned how to build anything after we blow it up. At least not in the last fifty years or so, which pretty much means no one who is alive now knows how to rebuild. We don't know how to make a democracy. Hell, we have trouble with our own on a daily basis. Why should we think a wave of the magic bunker buster bomb is going to make other people suddenly democratic?

I was never for this war, but this is nothing new. The easiest way for us to win was never to begin. We were winning in Iraq before we invaded. Iraq wasn't doing anything except talking shit--which is exactly what little nations under the sanction thumb of the only superpower in the world are supposed to do.

It's been almost four years of war in Iraq. In March, we will hit that anniversary. We will not be out of the country by then. We will not be out by the end of the year. We might still be there when November 2008 comes around (to the great consternation of whichever Republican candidate happens to get the nomination).

The elections sent a message to a guy who doesn't listen to anyone who isn't telling him what he wants to hear. The President is hellbent for leather to stay in Iraq until his moving trucks pull away from the White House. The rest of us can bitch and moan and tell this guy he needs to do something, but he doesn't have to. And I don't think he will.

He's not running for anything else in his life. He might end up pulling the biggest disappearing act of a US President since Ford. And the rest of us will be left swilling the slop the pigs on the wing have left all over the floor.

Matt Worley would rather be a horse than a piggie any day.