Sunday morning toons: 4500 American military deaths and $800 billion later

America has finally withdrawn from our pointless and illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq (for which no one has been or ever will be forced to take responsibility).

Of course, that doesn't count the part about leaving thousands upon thousands of troops there, in a country far less stable than when we first rolled in to teach them a lesson about trying to kill Junior's old man.

Peace on Earth (void where prohibited).

Today's selections have been carefully wrapped and hung by the fire, chosen from the week's political cartoon pages at Slate, Time, Mario Piperni, About.com, and Daryl Cagle:

p3 Picks of the Week:   Mike Luckovich, Nick Anderson, Randy Bish, Mike Thompson, Tom Toles, Matt Davies, Jeff Danziger, Lisa Benson, Clay Bennett, R. J. Matson, Joe Heller, John Cole, Matthew Bors, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Legion of Honor (not acceptable as a government-issued ID): Ed Stein.

p3 Best in Show: Bill Day.

p3 Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium (tie): Dick Locher and Scott Stantis. 

p3 Certificate of Harmonic Toon Convergence: John Darkow, Gary Markstein, and Mike Keefe. 

p3 World Toon Review: Dario Castillejos (Mexico), Luo Jie (China), Cam Cardow (Canada), and Shlomo Cohen (Israel).


Ann Telnaes notes the reason for the season -- if you grew up reading Ayn Rand.


History buffs may recall that the Vietnam War ended twice: Once when Nixon declared victory, and again a couple of years later, when we finally left. Mark Fiore detects detects a similar pattern in the Middle East.


And speaking of the Iraq pullout: Taiwan's Next Media Animation spells out what it really means.


Oh, my. Isn't that lovely? Mmm. Yes. I don't spend a lot of time at p3 giving notice to The National Review, but when they bash Gingrich and use a wonderful Warner Bros mash-up cover image to do it, well, it's at least worth linking to someone who links to them.


Tom Tomorrow presents fun facts about Newt. (I'm not sure if that Bonus Fact is true or not; easy enough to believe, though.)


Keith Knight offers the most disturbing holiday wish I've seen so far.


Tom the Dancing Bug offers a special version of a beloved holiday story -- featuring an oddly familiar-looking snowman.


At Red Meat, the nine-foot long gift boxes were only the beginning.


The Comic Curmudgeon exposes an epistemological crisis in “The Phantom.”


Portland homeboy Jack Ohman spots a high plains drifter.


Not even a mouse! “The Night Before Christmas” (1941), directed by Joe Hanna and William Barbera, is the third of the golden age Tom and Jerry cartoons, released the day before Pearl Harbor. Like the earliest in the series, Tom is still very much a cat -- a Russian blue, in fact -- unlike the tall guy in a cat suit he eventually became on H&B's watch.

If your browser won't display the embedded version, click here.

p3 Bonus Toon: Jesse Springer notes that Oregon's unemployment rate hits a 3-year low of 9.1%, but many economists believe it is because discouraged job-seekers have left the labor market. His solution is a tad on the dark side, although it makes mathematical sense:

Test your toon-captioning skills at The New Yorker's weekly caption-the-cartoon contest. (Rules here.)