Quote of the day: Does it matter at all that the administration admits we're not fighting terrorism in Iraq but intervening in sectarian violence?

How will people feel about our troops being sent into the crossfire between rival Muslim sects? That is not the war anyone signed up to fight.
—Dan Froomkin, in his washingtonpost.com "White House Briefing" blog yesterday titled "A Whole New War"

It's fairly ironic, I suppose, that while Chimpy the Prez seems to have no clue himself what "irony" is,* not only is he a serial unwitting perpetrator of irony, but the far-right revolution of which he's the figurehead-in-chief is a near-bottomless well of it. For example, awhile back when washingtonpost.com embarrassed itself by hiring as its designated right-wing blogger a recently postcollegiate twerp who turned out to be not only a cretin and an intellectual thug but a serially plagiarizing cretin and intellectual thug, the reason the brain-dead twerp had been hired was to "balance" the quite brilliant blogging of Dan Froomkin.

Now, while Froomkin is clear about his sympathies and convictions, he's also an excellent and thorough and dare I say fairly balanced reporter. Or was that maybe the idea? To "balance" an intelligent and conscientious and fair-minded blogger with a pea-brained ideological wacko?

Anyway, here is what Froomkin had to say yesterday about the belated admission of a momentous policy change by the administration:

President Bush and national security adviser Stephen Hadley yesterday for the first time publicly acknowledged the momentous shift in the role for U.S. troops in Iraq, from fighting terrorists to trying to suppress religious violence.

This sea change was described in such understated terms that it was eclipsed by news about the crisis in Lebanon. Bush described a change in tactics; Hadley called it a repositioning.

But it's a historic admission: That job one for many American troops in Iraq is no longer fighting al-Qaeda terrorists, or even insurgents. Rather, it is trying to quell an incipient—if not already raging—sectarian civil war, with Baghdad as ground zero.

Arguably, that's been the case for quite a while. But having the White House own up to it is a very big deal.

As things stand now, an overwhelming majority of the American public no longer supports Bush's handling of the war, which they think was a mistake in the first place. A majority wants American troops to start coming home soon. What unqualified support there is for the war seems to come from people who believe it is central front in the war on terror.

But how will people feel about our troops being sent into the crossfire between rival Muslim sects? That is not the war anyone signed up to fight.

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*For the record, here's what that open mike caught the First Chimp blithering—through his disgustingly partially masticated dinner roll—to frat brother "Blair": "See, the irony is what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it's over." Now I've thought about this, and I'll be damned if I can even guess from this what Chimpy thinks irony is. Any theories?