Sunday's Book World section in The Washington Post was devoted, as its cover suggested, to "Iraq: Six books on the lives lost, the money spent and the opportunities squandered." The cover photo implied two American soldiers pointing guns at a terrified and bloodied Iraqi man. Every book reviewed was a liberal book on Iraq or the broader Middle East, and every one was pronounced as wise. But the worst page was Page Six, devoted to "startling parallels" between the American revolution and the Iraqi insurgency, between King George III and George W. Bush...and between our Founding Fathers and Iraqi terrorists?

The Post's senior military correspondent Thomas Ricks reviewed a "brilliant, classic history of the American Revolution" (Piers Mackesy's The War in America, 1775-1783) as a means of attacking Bush's strategic cluelessness: "Five years into their war to retain control of America, the British thought they were winning." But a year later, all was lost by the British. Is Ricks rooting for a "fiasco" to match forever the title of his anti-Iraq war book? The review's title was "Then and Now: The startling parallels between the Iraq War and the American Revolution." Between a painting of George III and George Bush was a text box: "These two wartime leaders might end up having more in common than just their first name."