The war game game.

I don't do it any more but for a long, long time (we're talking long time here) I was an inveterate player of war games. Following in the tradition of H.G. Wells, who wrote the seminal book on war gaming, "Little Wars" ("A Game for Boys From Twelve Years of Age to One Hundred and Fifty and for That More Intelligent Sort of Girl Who Likes Boys' Games and Books") I have marched hundreds - yea, thousands - of little cardboard squares to their doom. I am a cardboardthirsty gamemonger at heart. And so it is that, in attempting to make sense of the day's events, I often imagine it's all just one big game and I am playing on the other side. Imaginarily, of course. And what I've been thinking to myself for several years now - imaginarily, that is - is this.

Whoa! How can I be as lucky as this?

Now I know at least one reason why. In a magnificently muddled dispatch today Kim Gamel of the Associated Press reports on a document purported to be "al-Zarqawi's blueprint," released by the Iraqi government, which claims to have found it in Zarqawi's "hideout." (The article fails to make clear if said hideout was the selfsame hideout recently pulverized by bombs, leaving behind charred remains and, in the process, bruising Zarqawi himself to death.) No matter. The AP has the goods. And there, among the goods, is this explanatory note from the terrorist regarding his evil plan:

"We mean specifically attempting to escalate the tension between America and Iran...."

So Bushco (and the Pentagon's spiffy new Iraq Directorate, it seems) have been playing into the master terrorist's hand all along. Or so it seems. It certainly does seem.

At least, that is, until said blueprint is appropriately clarified, for which we confidently depend upon Faux News.

Correction: Iran Directorate. Iran. Not Iraq, Iran. See? I have the same problem with spelling Bushco has. Gotta remember. Repeat, repeat. Shoulda bombed the "n" one, not the "q" one. Why can't those people think of any better names?