Ted Rall: (and Why We Won't)

NEW YORK--In last week's column I marveled in passing that the rightie hawks who started the Iraq War with a myriad of excuses--fictional WMDs, delusions of spreading democracy, phony links to 9/11, Saddam's plot to kill Bush's dad--can't summon up a single compelling reason to keep fighting. They say we have to "finish the job." What job? They won't say.

We can't leave Iraq, Bush says, until we "win." But victory (finding a stash of rusty poison gas canisters from the Iran-Iraq War? setting up a Shiite theocracy? proving that Mohammed Atta was Iraqi?) remains undefined.