Traveling imposes time and distance restraints, making apt and current writing difficult sometimes. I just caught this story today and it seemed to me to be a near-perfect analogy for our efforts in Iraq:

This is a weird story. Earlier today, a blast near a soccer field in Ramadi kills scores of children. Also today, apparently, the US military conducted an explosion near a soccer field in Ramadi that hurt a bunch of children. But the US military is saying the deadly attack couldn't have happened, because they'd have known about it. At the same time, both of these attacks sound awful similar - like they may be the same explosion, i.e., one we caused.

If I’m reading this right, there were (supposedly) two explosions near soccer fields in Ramadi, one caused by us (good explosion – sorry about the wounded children) and one caused by the usual suspects (bad explosion – the evil bastards killed 18 children.)

And the US claims to know nothing about the car bomb attack.

But here's where it gets stranger. The US says they can't imagine the deadly attack is real since they weren't aware of it:

Iraq's government and police said a bomb blast near a soccer field in the western city of Ramadi on Tuesday killed 18 people, mostly children, but the U.S. military said it was unaware of such an attack....

"I can't imagine there would be another attack involving children without our people knowing," said Major Jeff Pool, a spokesman for U.S. forces in western Anbar province. The wounded had cuts and bruises, he said [referring to the explosion the US caused near a soccer field].

Isn’t that just like those evil insurgents? Setting off car bombs when our backs are turned.

A cynical man might wonder just how many soccer fields there are in Ramadi.