What the fuck is Ryan C. Crocker talking about?

Crocker is the U.S.'s ambassador to Iraq--an undesirable, if not downright impossible, job, to be sure. But while he's being interviewed inside Saddam's old Republican Palace, THIS CRAZY SHIT is what he has to say about the current policy debate on withdrawal swirling in Washington:

Setting out what he said was not a policy prescription but a review of issues that needed to be weighed, the ambassador compared Iraq’s current violence to the early scenes of a gruesome movie.

“In the States, it’s like we’re in the last half of the third reel of a three-reel movie, and all we have to do is decide we’re done here, and the credits come up, and the lights come on, and we leave the theater and go on to something else,” he said. “Whereas out here, you’re just getting into the first reel of five reels,” he added, “and as ugly as the first reel has been, the other four and a half are going to be way, way worse.

If this is the level of abstraction that administration officials are resorting to, then no matter what George Bush says shortly in Cleveland, his Iraq misadventure is beyond doomed, and his legacy is in the toilet (as it should be).