Bad Lieutenant, a 1992 movie by Abel Ferrara starring Harvey Keitel as a cop with a gambling problem, is a bizarre and profound movie, a lurid psychodrama weaving together images of out-of-control vice with religious symbolism.

There's a lot going on in that movie, but the major sub-plot of "double or nothing" gambling disaster keeps coming to mind as I try to understand where the Iraq misadventure has been coming from - and, in a fuzzy way, where it might tend to be going.

If you haven't seen it yet (and are not too squeamish about occasionally intense images of depravity) I recommend watching it in juxtaposition to the "turning the corner" PR blitz that will be ramping up next week.

If you have seen the movie already then you might recognize what I'm talking about here...

Juan Cole notes some disturbing news:

"it was confirmed on Thursday that the United States military used napalm-like incendiary bombs called MK77 in the Iraq War and then lied to their British allies about it. MK77 and napalm materials cling to the skin an inexorably burn the victim, and most countries in the world consider their use barbaric and something close to a war crime. The UK is signatory to a pledge not to use the weapons. British parliamentarians are now revisiting the question of whether MK77 was used against Fallujah last November."

Cole cited a recent article in the UK newspaper The Independent.

More details in that article ...