The end is near

Things are just looking uglier and uglier in Iraq. Earlier today, the Shite militias took over a major Iraqi city in the South. Now, the Sunni insurgents are staging military style parades through several cities in the West, essentially thumbing their noses at the Americans:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Al-Qaida-linked gunmen staged military-like parades Friday in a string of towns west of Baghdad, underlining the growing confidence of Sunni insurgents in a part of Iraq where U.S. and Iraqi forces maintain a heavy counterinsurgency presence. Like the audacious show of force by up to 60 insurgents in the city of Ramadi on Wednesday, the latest parades -- including two less than a mile from U.S. military bases -- were staged in support of an announcement this week by a militant Sunni Arab group that it had created an Islamic state in six of Iraq's 18 provinces, including the capital, Baghdad.

It's really beginning to look to me like the end is very near. We're about to get booted out of there on our keisters, and the defeat is not going to be a pretty picture.