"OKAY. IT DOESN'T seem all right to me, but what do I know? Nothing. What do they know? Everything. So I guess everything's okay."

That's, more or less, what I've been saying to myself about Iraq for the last year. Not quite out loud, just muttered most of the time, when I'm alone, or when the kids are watching TV, which is much the same thing. What makes me mumble so?

Seeing a headline about another two, or five--or twelve--American soldiers killed.

Hearing the top folks say, "Nope, don't need any more troops. Got plenty now."

And especially, watching well-known nests of domestic and imported bad guys being allowed to grow and grow and grow and grow, and get stronger, and make their plans. And watch. And wait. And attack.

Anyone who reads past page two has known since the president landed on that aircraft carrier that Falluja was the headquarters, the homeland, the core of everyone who ever worked and killed for Saddam Hussein. It's not just a place, a city, a neighborhood, with terrific down-home folks going to choir practice and trying to get by in tough times. It's the place--the bull's-eye. It might as well be named Tortureville, or Saddamfield, or Baathburg. What in the world did anyone imagine was going to sprout up there in the last 12 months? A chamber of commerce? A garden club? A band shell for Sunday programs of Sousa?

All right, wait. Sorry. Let me repeat my mantra; that always helps. Breath in, breath out . . . "What do I know? Nothing. What do they know? Everything. It's all fine, just fine."

Hey, it didn't help that time. What's wrong? It's like what they say about heroin, the effect is less and less, until you finally have to take it just not to feel horrible.

I mentioned the aircraft carrier for a reason, something else I've held in for a year. I hated it. I support what we've done in the war on terror the whole way; President Bush was put in this job for a reason. I think we've started to crack the hardest granite in history. I think we're in World War Three, Four, Five, and Six-through-Ten combined--and I think we should be--but I hated that landing.

It made me wince like a big sip of sour milk, but at the time I didn't know why. I do now. It was an end-zone dance, and I hate end-zone dances. They're unseemly, and they always happen when the game isn't over. And this one isn't over by a long shot.

Now, the sum total of my military knowledge and experience has been watching the Ken Burns Civil War thing, and reading Red Storm Rising. I have no war fantasies, I have no uniformed service outside of the cub scouts, and I'm not an armchair general, although I'm a big supporter of both generals and armchairs.

I would never, ever be flippant about the risk and loss of the lives of our soldiers (or our police and firemen, for that matter), or of any of those who put themselves in harm's way to protect and serve. But when I saw that banner saying "Mission Accomplished," I thought, no, no, it isn't accomplished at all, it's barely begun, and if we're going to do this thing, accept this challenge, fully absorb the import of this moment, it's going to wind up making the Hundred Years' War look like a performance of Nicholas Nickleby.