Mr Fred Kagan, the famous Napoleonic War expert, devised a special plan to save Mr Bu$h’s biscuits in Iraq. All we had to do is strip every last available soldier in the States, including those who haven’t had a proper amount of time resting and recuperating from their last tour over there, and those who have just joined and haven’t yet had desert and urban combat training, and ship them over there to smack down Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army, and then we will get the flowers and candy we were cheated out of when Mr Bu$h first illegally invaded the country.

So far one brigade, from the 82nd Airborne Division, has been shipped out there. Interestingly, this brigade (and the other units of the 82nd ) were our nation’s Strategic Reserve, intended to be the rapid deployment force if a hotspot developed somewhere else in the world. The 82nd rotates its brigades through three cycles: buildup and reconstitute, training, and ready force. The ready force is now fulfilling Mr Kagan’s demand for more troops.

When I think of this I remember the story of the farmer and his seed corn. If you eat your seed corn over a particularly harsh winter you have nothing to plant next Spring. I also think of the story about the grasshopper and the ant. Here’s hoping nothing goes wrong anywhere else in the world, eh? But - is hope a proper method of handling foreign policy? Is it the best foundation for a nation's security?

On March 11th, Mr Kagan’s brother Robert wrote a childish, triumphant column in the Washington Post titled “The Surge Is Working” which we tried to deconstruct a bit here. We had the wrong Kagan in mind when we first wrote the article, but that’s not important because the Kagan family, father Daniel, sons Robert and Fred are as alike as peas in a pod. They’re all devoted to the Likud Party.

Last Thursday, a truck bomb in Tal Afar reportedly killed 152 people, left 347 wounded, destroyed 100 houses and any shops, and incited a police riot among the Shiite police in that city which killed another 47. On Saturday car bombs and shootings killed another 27. According to the Interior Ministry, another 10 bodies were found in Baghdad.

Eighty one US troops died in March, the first month of the “security crackdown” demanded by the Mr Kagan. There were 83 dead GIs in January and 80 in February. (Three days less in that month.) Interestingly, only 44 Iraqi soldiers died during March, the first full month of the crackdown, although 165 Iraqi police died. According to the AP, 3,246 GIs have died in Iraq since Mr Bu$h started his little ego-war in March 2003.

We’re not sure just how much more of this successful surge America and Iraq can stand.