For a moment, last night, I caught that rare infectious disease I get sometimes from watching television, I'm not sure what you call it, "hope", "optimism". It never lasts long. It's kind of like the 24-hour flu (or, in this case, the 4-hour flu) but there was Anderson Cooper on CNN broadcasting from Amman, Maliki had refused to meet with Bush, the Hadley memo had been leaked, the findings of the Iraq commission due out next week had been leaked and they were recommending "pullback". (They call it "pullback" because it's diplomat-speak for withdrawal.) Maliki had met with Ahmadinejad and it looked as though they had come to an agreement. The Americans were talking about sitting down with Iran. And there was Anderson Cooper broadcasting from Amman, Jordan and the voice-over and crawl, "Iraq - the end-game". Ahmadinejad had written the American people a letter (although, as my husband pointed out, we had written a letter to the Iraqi people, too, right before we bombed them). But, for one moment, I got giddy. And I actually believed that somebody besides Danny De Vito (whose performance on "The View" yesterday was so brilliant and so hilarious and so courageous and so spot-on, but part of what was so funny about it was watching Barbara Walters, who I adore and respect and admire, and revere, get more and more uncomfortable from the moment he walked on stage and, frankly, Danny De Vito sitting on Rosie O'Donnell's lap is funny, it just is - in fact, if "The View" is supposed to be about disparate points of view on the same show, it was sheer genius and I think that episode should be nominated for an Emmy)! And that sentence went on so long that I'll say it again, for a moment, last night, I had a feeling that somebody besides Danny De Vito (and Harry Reid and 67% of America) had come to their senses.
There was a moment last night when I watched CNN when I had "hope", every time they called it "the end-game" that we might wake up this morning and the nightmare that began almost 3 ½ years ago, might be over and that our troops might come home and some plan to restore order and to rebuild Iraq might be in place. But it was only for a moment.
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