THE QUAGMIRE CLUB is discussed by William Powers at the National Journal:

There’s a ritual, a kind of quagmire Kabuki that never varies. Someone employs the word in a war-news report or one of those deeply important “analysis” pieces that are just opinion columns in front-page drag. The most famous quagmirist, R.W. Apple Jr. of The New York Times, doesn’t even have to use the word anymore. He just does an interpretive fan-dance around it and everyone knows what he means.

Heh. Though the image of Johnny Apple doing a fan dance is, well, disturbing. Sally Rand he ain’t. Meanwhile non-quagmirist Tom Holsinger writes that Baghdad may be more like Manila, 1945 than Grozny, 1995.

Interesting.