A reflective post from Mark Kleiman about the war that also, in passing, wins the Mixed Metaphor of the Month Award:

The other was the Richard Perle “paper tiger” scenario, where the regime turned out to have a glass jaw.

“The Iraqi leaders were supposed to go down like a house of ninepins,” he did not add.

I’m not picking on Mark’s excellent blog, by the way. It’s just that, thanks to an English teacher in my past, mixed metaphors tend to jump out at me like a house on fire.