I like Jenga metaphor. As soon as I saw the title of the thread I formed a picture in my head before I even saw the slide. The way I interpreted it was perhaps a bit more abstract than others did. The Jenga tower represents the overall problem of transition and we must play the game (I don't picture a direct correlation between the removal of the blocks and specific things like troop levels and such, rather I saw it as task we must accomplish representing everything we must accomplish in Iraq). Those have played Jenga know that the early moves are relatively easy but the later moves get progressively harder and require more time to accomplish as the tower gets more unstable. The problem then becomes that we are now on a stopwatch, imposed by political expediency and John Q Public's ADHD among other factors. (I also saw the stopwatch as representing dwindling resources as well as time, by the way.) We no longer have as much time as we would like to make our moves. Unlike the normal game however, the goal is not to win by having your opponent crash the tower but have the tower still standing when time runs out (Ken's acceptable outcome vs "victory"). It is an imperfect metaphor but that is the way I pictured it.

SFC W