When brute force fails, you're not using enough

* NYDN:

"Yesterday's news that chief political guru Karl Rove won't be indicted in the Scooter Libby CIA leak probe - something the White House has known about for several days - is another welcome psychological boost for Bush and Republicans"

* Kleiman:

"We've already got 2.2 million people behind bars, which is several times the historical norm for incarceration per capita. Those who want to keep building prisons must subscribe to the maxim, "When brute force fails, you're not using enough.""

* Billmon:

"And politically, it comes down to this: Ever since the war began to go south -- say, in the late summer or early fall of 2003 -- the Cheneyites have relied on a never-ending string of bogus "turning points" to deflect criticism and create the illusion that victory in Iraq (whatever that means) is creeping closer, despite the mounting chaos and death. But with Zarqawi's elimination, the never-ending string has, for all intents and purposes, ended.

There are no more name-brand dictators or terrorists left to catch or kill: Zarqawi's successor is so obscure nobody seems to know who he is or where he came from -- it's not even written into the script yet. The elections are over, so there'll be no more purple fingers to wave in front of the cameras. The "permanent" government has been formed; all of its ministers finally named.

The turning points, in other words, have all been turned, and Iraq is still a killing field. Now that the last few macbre headlines have been squeezed out of Zarqwari's autopsy report, democracy boy and his handlers literally have nothing to look forward to -- except a long, hot summer of IEDs, ethnic cleansing and more of those flag-wrapped caskets being Federal Expressed to cemetaries around the country.

To be sure, you know this won't stop the machine from simply making shit up -- kilowatt hours of available electricty conjured out of thin air, paper battalions magically transformed into crack commando units, pins on maps marking pacified villages where insurgents held sway only days before. If there is one thing that any bureaucracy knows how to do, and do well, it's spit out the kind of statistics that can make defeat look like victory, at least for a while."