How did we go from winning the war in Iraq to losing overnight? Was this decided by the same committee that changed "Peking" to "Beijing"?

These word changes are a fortiori evidence that liberals are part of a conspiracy. On what date did "horrible" and "actress" vanish from the English language to be replaced with "horrific" and "actor"? Who decided that? (Meanwhile, I'm still writing "Puff Daddy" in my nightly dream journal when everybody else has started calling him "Diddy.")

When did "B.C." (before Christ) and "A.D." (anno Domini, "in the year of the Lord") get replaced with "BCE" (before the common era) and "CE" (common era)? "Withdrawal" is "redeployment," "liberal" is "progressive," and "traitorous" is "patriotic."

These new linguistic conventions -- like going from "winning" to "losing" in Iraq -- simply spread like an invisible bacterial invasion.

To be sure, last month the Democrats did win a narrow majority in Congress for the first time in more than a decade. And it cannot be denied that for the past 50 years, Democrats have orchestrated humiliating foreign policy defeats for America. So it is understandable that some might interpret their midterm gains as a mandate for another humiliating defeat.

But that's not what the Democrats told Americans when they were running for office. To the contrary, they claimed to be gun-totin' hawks. A shockingly high number of Democratic candidates this year actually fought in wars. And not just the war on poverty, either -- real wars, against men with guns.

It was a specific plan of Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair Rep. Rahm Emanuel to fake out the voters by recruiting anti-war veterans to run against Republicans. (And when did "chairman" become "chair"?)

To the credit of the voters -- especially the American Legion and VFW -- the Democrats didn't fool enough Americans to even match the average midterm gains for the party out of power.

But the point is: You can't run as a phony patriot and then claim your victory is a mandate for surrender. That would be like awarding yourself undeserved Purple Hearts and then pretending to throw them over the White House wall in protest. No, that's not fair -- nothing could be as contemptible as throwing someone else's medals on the ground in protest.

Is it the report of the "Iraq Surrender Group" that suddenly caused everyone to say we're losing?

The ISG report was about what you'd expect if the ladies from "The View" were asked to come up with a victory plan for Iraq. We need to ask Syria to tell Hamas to stop calling for the destruction of Israel. Duh! "Dear Hamas, Do you like killing Jews, or do you LIKE killing Jews? Check yes or no."

Most of the esteemed members of the ISG were last seen on the "Dead or Alive?" Web site. Vernon Jordan's most recent claim to fame was getting Monica Lewinsky a job at Revlon when she was threatening Bill Clinton with the truth. He's going to figure out an honorable way to get out of Iraq?

We're still trying to figure out a six-part test from some decision Sandra Day O'Connor wrote back in 1984, but now she's going to tell us what to do in Iraq.

Have things changed on the ground in Iraq? Are our troops being routed? Hardly. The number of U.S. fatalities has gone from a high of 860 deaths in 2004 to 845 in 2005, to 695 through November of this year. If the Islamic fascists double their rate of killing Americans in the next month, there will still be fewer American fatalities in Iraq this year than in the previous two years.

Admittedly, it would be a little easier to track our progress in Iraq if the Pentagon would tell us how many of them we're killing, but apparently our Pentagon is too spooked by the insurgents posing as civilians to mention the deaths of our enemies.

Moreover, it might seem churlish to mention the number of Islamic lunatics we've killed during the holy month of Ramadan. Half the time we do anything to them, it's "the holy month of Ramadan." It's always Ramadan. When on Earth is Ramadan over?

It's true that no one anticipated that al-Qaida sympathizers would stream into Iraq to fight the Great Satan after Saddam fled to a spider hole, but that's because everyone expected al-Qaida to be fighting us here.

Like "Peking," that's something else we can't say anymore: the amazing absence of another 9/11-style terrorist attack in the past five years. The heart of the insurgency in Iraq is, by definition, composed of Islamic terrorists who hate the Great Satan, own an overnight bag and are willing to travel to kill Americans. But don't worry: The Iraq Surrender Group feels sure they won't come here if we pull out of Iraq.

If absolutely nothing changed in Iraq over the next few years -- if it didn't continue to get better and if the savages never lost heart (I'm assuming they subscribe to "TimesSelect") -- by 2010, 6,000 brave American troops will have died to prevent another 9/11 terrorist attack on American soil for a decade.

If that's a war Americans think we're "losing," Osama bin Laden was right: We are a paper tiger.