Even the question in the title of your article on the American crackdown in Iraq is a joke (“Is the Surge Beginning to Work?” March 3, 2007). But it gets worse, much worse, as you twist and turn through the article, which never offers a clear answer to this simple rhetorical question. The surge is nothing but a joke, as is abundantly clear between your lines. It is a joke militarily, for it is obvious that twenty-thousand fresh American soldiers cannot possibly stop a civil war in a country of some twenty-seven million people. And it is an even greater joke politically—both in the volatile region, which itself is torn by the Iraqi civil war, and in America, which is torn by the presidential race that is already in earnest. Given your pigheaded support for the American invasion of Iraq, the best title you could have selected for your article as it stands would be something like: “Too little, too late.” Even that would be a bit of a joke, but only on you.