There are currently only 12—yes, 12—embedded reporters in Iraq, and one of them just got kicked out of the group for posting a picture of a dead Marine on his blog. So how do we know what's really going on over there? As if an embedded reporter could tell us anyway. But oh, we know. We know that it's a version of hell. That people are being maimed and tortured and killed. That children are suffering.

But..."We like war! We're a warlike people," as the late great George Carlin said. (See www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaS2bRGS86c)

And we know that the whole thing is making a whole lot of money for a whole lot of friends of the Bush administration, particularly oil men. Did you happen to catch the story in last week's Times about the secret deal Hunt Oil cut with the Kurds, with the help of the State department, enraging the Iraqi government? It got no play in the media, although it was every bit as scandalous as Barack and Michelle Obama's fist bump.

The Hunts, by the way, are reportedly members of the Council for National Policy—a secretive, invitations-only group of hard-line, right-wing conservatives who are very cosy with the Bush administration. An executive director of the CNP once boasted, "We control everything in the world." (See abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=121170) These are "flat-earth Christians," as someone who studies them told me. They see the Iraq war as a holy war, and the oil as theirs.

Do we really need psychologists to explain to us why more Iraqi women are becoming suicide bombers?