If you're against the Iraq war and you exhibit superhuman endurance, eventually you'll get a hint of respect from even the hardest-line hawk. Instead of facing the human consequences of staying the course, prominent war supporters are prone to reciting vicious non sequiturs to the effect that American casualties in the current war there are small compared to those of Korea and Vietnam. Today, Charles Krauthammer writes that the idea "that the war is lost and therefore it is unconscionable to make one more American soldier die for a cause that cannot be salvaged" is "a serious argument." Kudos on that. Unfortunately, his column is titled "Iraq: A Civil War We Can Still Win," indicating that -- alas, unsurprisingly -- he adheres to what other pieces in today's Washington Post suggest is a completely unreasonable optimism.

And unfortunately, you'd have to delve well past the front page to find this coverage and thereby to understand why so many other observers of the war have grown cynical, regardless of political affiliation, because these stories are part of a long, horrible pattern of news in this conflict.

Consider: "Roadside bombs in Iraq escalated to record levels this summer -- to about four times the number of January 2004," we are told, and this despite a roughly $3.5 billion program aimed at combatting them. Gen. Montgomery Meigs (US Army ret.), placed in charge of the program, could only point to "'slow, grudging progress'" and admitted that "the military can add only so much armor to its vehicles while remaining mobile..." (This is from Ann Scott Tyson, page A12 -- this story should have been on A1, wouldn't you say?)

Or again, consider: "Baghdad's morgue almost tripled its count for violent deaths in Iraq's capital during August from 550 to 1,536, authorities said Thursday, appearing to erase most of what U.S. generals and Iraqi leaders had touted as evidence of progress in a major security operation to restore order in the capital." In July, the total had been over 1,800; further, "[a]t least 3,438 Iraqis were killed across the country that month, nearing the total of roughly 5,000 for the entire first year of the war." Don't forget, firearm fatalities brought to the Baghdad morgue are "now predominantly shot execution-style and often found with hands bound and showing signs of torture." (This update is from Baghdad bureau chief Ellen Knickmeyer, also relegated to page A12.)

The bloodshed among American forces and Iraqi civilians alike continues, "an old story" unworthy of focused attention, it seems, while Krauthammer posits ambitious new strategies to "win." The point is not that all American forces should necessarily leave immediately; some limited objectives could help mitigate the horrors of Iraqis' lives now. The point is that the overwhelming momentum of the debate ought to emphasize the urgent logic of deescalation, but media coverage and congressional debate still regards a cruel fixation on the status quo as the more serious, sober-minded, mature, and respectable position. Most Iraqis and most Americans want our forces to leave and the bloodshed continues, albeit hidden from view. "Also Thursday, the Iraqi government temporarily shut down the Baghdad bureau of al-Arabiya television . . . [as a] 'warning for the unprofessional conduct of their correspondents in covering events in Iraq,' Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said on state television." This item, incidentally, in an article about Zarqawi's successor and his vile activities, also ended up on -- you guessed it -- A12. In Iraq, censorship is freedom, now, it appears. "Al Jazeera has been barred from working in Iraq for the past two years." But who's counting?

Debate and creative thought are always welcome in a democracy contemplating complex challenges of war, diplomacy, humanitarianism, and national security. So you can read the hawks' work and listen to their speeches and truly hope they develop a better plan. But in the meantime, you cannot reasonably withhold judgment in the face of the patterns the war has long since taken. In the abstract, the determination of hawks is noble. In reality, in the case of Iraq, it has almost become what (colloquially speaking) can perhaps best be thought of as a respectable madness. I say "almost" because Krauthammer, at least, did contemplate the toll the war is taking on our military today. Perhaps reality is slowly, amidst much kicking and screaming, finding its way back into all sides of the badly uninformed and PR-suffused discourse that has attended this war.

For those of you who, like me, thought the Plame case was a fading story that in the end had reflected rather badly on Joseph Wilson, a post from Larry Johnson is worth reading. Whatever the complexities of the full story, I'm embarrassed to say I had started to believe some of what turns out to have been Republican spin and inaccuracy on this issue. The relentless drip of pundits' condescension and insinuation was insidious.

And for the record, Mr. Armitage should not have revealed this classified information either. It was wrong.