Narratives matter -- stories that make sense of the messy realities of the world, that connect cause with effect, that have a beginning, middle and end. We seek to understand the struggle in Iraq by constructing narratives and fitting events into them. But sometimes a narrative is undercut and rendered inoperative by emerging facts. And sometimes a new narrative emerges when facts previously unknown come to light. Both happened in the past two weeks. The narrative that was undercut was the claim by Joseph Wilson that the Bush White House had breached national security by disclosing the identity of his...