Ordinarily I try to steer clear of rabid conservative columnist Kathleen Parker (how tidy does your worldview have to be to see the kind of straw men opponents she constantly picks fights with as the only barriers to global utopia?) But I think she makes an important point here (despite her smug rhetoric about how precise our troops have been). I never trust the media when they start quacking "quagmire" one week into any military conflict, as they've done since Vietnam.

Americans and Brits have secured strategic areas, including oil fields in the south and airstrips in the north; carefully minimized civilian casualties; fed and doctored surrendering Iraqis; uncovered a "torture hospital" and a terrorist camp packed with training equipment for nuclear, biological and chemical warfare; and encircled Baghdad in less than two weeks with less than 50 American casualties.

This is a failed plan?