Animal [White] House (without the humor)

Remember the scene in National Lampoon's Animal House in which the hapless "Flounder" sees what his frat brothers have done with his brothers shiny new Cadillac? Remember how Tim Matheson's character says to him, "Flounder, you can't spend your whole life worrying about your mistakes! You fucked up -- you trusted us! Hey, make the best of it!"

Well, the Downing Street Memo has hit Stars and Stripes, which means that both military families and the guys in the trenches in Iraq are hearing about how their Commander-in-Chief lied to put them in harm's way.

It's going to be a very interesting eighteen months if the increasing flow of documentation out of the U.K. somehow, despite the best efforts of all the MSM outside of AP, manages to gain traction. Suppose the Republicans, because they so enthusiastically supported everything this Administration did, are so unpopular that rigging the 2006 election is going to look suspicious -- and they do it anyway.

There's going to be rioting in the streets, I tell you. But it's not going to be people like me out there; those of us who have known for the last five years who we were dealing with in this Administration. No, it's going to be all those red-staters who can no longer delude themselves that the President is an honest man and Republicans are the party of working people. It's going to be all those red-staters who sent proudly their sons to keep America safe from terrorists and had them come home in a box -- only to find that their president never had any intention of going after the people who attacked us on 9/11; his sole raison d'etre was to go into Iraq and do what his Daddy didn't or couldn't. It's going to be all those red-staters who voted against their own self-interest because they believed the bullshit. It's going to be all those red staters who couldn't believe that a President would lie to get us into a war.

And when they get angry, it's not going to be pretty. See that quote from Cindy Sheehan in the sidebar? Imagine a couple million of them, all furious that their trust was betrayed.

They fucked up. They trusted them. And their children are paying with their lives.