The first hiccup of his usurpation was the second bottle. It slithered past the incisors, a Mamba of zooanthropic vengeance, exuding a peaty pathos, a 12-year-old blurt of inhumation, to crash against the pharynx which had held, Cincinattus-esque, against so many lucre-hefted Caledonian tides, but which on this first day of a coming future teetered and fell, a single twin tower, a meat WTC, revealing in its nude Lucretism the weakness of the West.

But let’s take the question seriously for a second here: who won in Iraq? To answer it, you have to start with a close-up of the region, then change magnification to look at the world picture. At a regional level the big winner is obvious: Iran. In fact, Iran wins so big in this war that I’ve already said that Dick Cheney’s DNA should be checked out by a reputable lab, because he has to be a Persian mole.