“Iraq is threatening to become a regular country. And that’s not the sort of news many newspapers are interested in.”

Sorry Richard, but the facts just don’t fit your narrative. But you’ve been wrong at every single step of the war, so why change now?

You’ve been predicting victory ever since you stopped writing as if it had already been achieved. In between these predictions, of course, your analysis has always focused exclusively on the potential benefits, never on the actual, mounting costs.

I notice you’re still writing about the conflict as if it didn’t cost anything, so you need not mention it. Alice in Wonderland indeed.

How many different ways are you going to try and spin this?

Today’s dodge is that Iraq is “threatening to become normal.” Why the circumlocution?

Is Iraq normal? Of course not. Is it becoming normal? Not by any relevant measure. But, yes, it is “threatening” to become normal, that much is undeniable.

There are more than 2 million Iraqi refugees. What is the plan for them? When they return, will the Baghdad neighborhoods that have become exclusively Sunni accept Shia and vice versa?

Threatening, indeed.