Giving the plan a chance to succeed...

"It seems pretty obvious to me that what we have been doing has not been working," he said, adding that the US could not hope to win "militarily".

"But could the situation in Iraq be turned around? I firmly believe it can, if we have the engagement of the capabilities that are necessary."

Adml William Fallon

Steve opines: "OK. So what? Is that supposed to be a rebuttal? If so, it's pretty juvenile. You might as well tell me I'm ugly or I smell bad. It would be just as pointless."

I was just making an observation. I won't go into your looks and your body odor... I don't want to scare away the visitors to the BP. :-)

"I daresay you could hear exactly what I said from more members of the military serving in Iraq than would make you comfortable."

I'm sure there are a few...

"Horse manure. Once again, you're just swallowing the Krauthammer-Podhoretz-Krystol line of BS without critical examination."

Just because you disagree with them doesn't make it BS...

"We lost Viet Nam because we didn't commit the resources and engage the strategy necessary to win. We tried to fight Viet Nam as a political exercise. In fact the reasons we lost in Viet Nam are almost identical to the reasons we will lose in Iraq. Our leaders don't have the stomach to commit to a strategy to win because it would cost them political points. The politicians restrain the dogs of war on leashes of bureaucracy."

Actually, we did win on the battlefield in Vietnam, but we lost it here at home. I agree I wished we had a better strategy in Iraq after Hussein fell, but we can't go back and start over again. I want to give this new strategy a chance to succeed, that's all.

"More nonsense. That's nothing but blame transfer. If the politicians fold because of rhetoric and pull back on the commanders' chains, it is not the fault of the rhetoric or whoever offered it, it is the fault of the weakling politicians. Furthermore, that kind of garbage is just more jingoism."

It's a fact of life though... I wish it wasn't that way, but most politicians are like that.

"All right. Describe, in detail, just exactly how they are a threat. How are a bunch of half-organized guerrillas, who can't even get out of the small enclaves they control, going to get over here and wreak mayhem? If you consider them a plausible threat, then you better start considering the plausible threat from Fijan natives and German nihilists."

If I felt they would stay in small enclaves, then I wouldn't consider them a threat. However, they seem to be able to travel the globe.

"No, "they" didn't. You don't even know who you're afraid of. On 9/11, some very well financed and well organized Saudis pulled off a plan they had been hatching for over a year. There wasn't a single Iraqi "insurgent" among them. But even partially granting your argument, I don't seem to recall experiencing the collapse of the United States on 9/12. In no way would I trivialize the deaths of those people, but more people than that are killed every year on the highways. Why hasn't Bush declared a "war on traffic?" And don't tell me that's silly. It is no sillier than a "war" on any other abstract noun."

I'm worried that next time, it will be more than 3,000. I'm not afraid in that I'm still doing roughly the same things that I did pre-9/11. However, I am more aware of my surroundings if that makes sense.

"In any case, you neglected to address the point that Bush's "war on terror" rings pretty hollow when he is enabling a situation that makes it more easily possible for terrorists to get at us."

I agree with regard to our borders... I'm just stating I want to give this plan a chance to succeed.

"You chose instead to get your drawers in a twist over the use of "my boy." All of this rah-rah cheerleading has become so very tiresome in the face of the obvious evidence that not even the head cheerleader has the stomach for "winning," however that is defined."

No, Steve, I didn't get my drawers in a twist... I'm cheerleading for our country to succeed in Iraq. My cheerleading has nothing to do with Bush.

"Failure may not be an option, but short of some drastic change of philosophy on the part of our leaders, it is most certainly unavoidable."

Just give this new plan a chance...