Can't tell about this guy; he may have that wingnut welfare gleam in his eye.

But I don't think the majority of the serving military have these right-wing tailored extreme views.

Yes, I think that probably a majority of them, not a large majority do support the mission, and fear an ending that feels like defeat to them. That's depressing enough for me.

Take a look at this piece by Spencer Ackerman; I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on it.

How interestingly different in tone is this one from the comment you left on my blog. . .

First, you have to understand one thing. I don't advocate genocide. The Palestinians seems bent on doing it to themselves. I simply suggest that we, what's the Progressive buzzphrase? Respect their unique and valuable culture and let them kill each other off.

Second, do actually try reading a selection of my posts, rather than cherry-picking.

If you genuinely wish to know why I am committed to winning in Iraq, please try the following posts:

http://castrorum.blogspot.com/2007/07/wh...
http://castrorum.blogspot.com/2007/05/di...
http://castrorum.blogspot.com/2007/05/is...
http://castrorum.blogspot.com/2007/05/ne...
http://castrorum.blogspot.com/2007/04/ir...
http://castrorum.blogspot.com/2007/03/un...
http://castrorum.blogspot.com/2007/03/im...
http://castrorum.blogspot.com/2007/02/li...
http://castrorum.blogspot.com/2007/01/mo...
http://castrorum.blogspot.com/2007/01/li...
http://castrorum.blogspot.com/2007/01/du...

Third, I joined the Army during the Clinton era.

Fourth, military pensions have little or nothing to do with which political party is in power. They date back to the first years of American history, and are highly unlikely to be substantially messed with regardless of what loon gets elected. Among other reasons, at least a few people in Congress still have enough historical acumen to realize why the Republic became the Principate. I leave that as an exercise for the reader.

All you need do is check his facts to see if his point is unpleasant, but valid.

Ya see... Decurion and others like him (myself included) deal in cold hard facts. Not wishful thinking or emotional hand wringing.

BTW, Decurion certainly has unstinting loyalty to some things. Perhaps he will delineate them for you, but I doubt you'll find Bush or any political party listed by name.

I'd like that seven minutes I spent over at The Marching Camp back, please.

So please, understand that those who have been brutalized are going to be here, needing lots of help. They are victims, too.

A former soldier from Vietnam wanders around the streets here, with that distress syndrome, he was a classmate of mine in the fifth grade. so many are never going to be the same again. We need to give them sympathy, and we need to help them get out.
Ruth

Ya see… Decurion and others like him (myself included) deal in cold hard facts. Not wishful thinking or emotional hand wringing.

Thank God for steely-eyed Objectivist rocket-men. They tell us the truth: everyone living in Palestine, even the youngest child, is a bloodthirsty killer / beast-thing (it's genetic, y'see) and to kill them is to do their mothers and the world a favor. We're just to sissified to handle it.

But I still believe
And I will rise up with fists!!

Er...I hate to break this news to you, but Decurion is a lot more tolerant and patient now than he was before he served two combat tours in Iraq. If he says the Palestinian culture is beyond repair, you could perhaps entertain the remote possibility that he might be right. Or he could be wrong--if you have evidence to the contrary, haul it out and let's see it. Palestine is admittedly not an area that I'm greatly interested in, so I could well have missed something. I'd have said that if a culture indoctrinates their grade school kids to commit suicidal terrorism against a peaceful neighbor, that culture doesn't have much to recommend it.

I don't want the Palestinians to exterminate themselves, but it's not obvious how they're going to avoid it except by radically changing their culture. At this point, it seems likely that they're going to change their culture by the rather drastic method of "those who are willing to fight, kill each other; those who aren't willing, emigrate or die."

As a point of clarification: please don't call the Iraq adventure a "military disaster", as doing so simply undermines your credibililty. Well, more accurately, it undermines your credibiility with people who know something about warfare. I can't think of a non-snarky way to say "it may increase your credibility among those who would rather see their faction win even if that means the country as a whole loses".

Fat lot of good real manliness will do when the real hunter seeker androids start being mass produced and introduced into the War on Terra by all the industrial powers in about 15 years or so.

Machines fighting war for fuel for the machines. Coming soon to a Future Combat theater near you. I'll let the tough guys show their macho to a 'borg with microwave weapon set on "nacho".

No Hell below us
Above us, only sky

I guess the message is that because of what the Palastine people have faced, they have become worthless unchangable human beings, forever to breed true. If that is possible, lets look at what is happening in this country. We are lucky that 70% of us have taken the time to understand why we don't want to become a nations like Palastine and Iraq, but want to return to what we were before the Bush regime began corrupting our freedoms. My best friend, a military type, tried the military approach with me, he knowing so much more than I about these things. Now he no longer tries, because if he does he has to argue with reality. Now he just admits that he believes the way he does because he "trusts" George Bush. My views of him have changed; I would never have thought with his intellect he would be so influenced by partianship. But I have hope, remembering he felt the same way about Nixon long after Nixon was brought down, but eventually saw the light.

I am no kind of coward, I am jimbo.

do come back, so we can get a taste of what the libertarian military are indoctrinating themselves on.

Perhaps it might help you understand the problem the Palestinians have to realize that the Occupied Territories are the core of the Isreali fundamentalist expansion, not the boundaries of it. Your dislike of the Middle East is something you've been conditioned into. The bell rings, and you salivate.

Muslims appear to be "exterminating themselves" because the slickest mind control experts in the world are right in the middle of it playing all sides against each other. We have a saying here: Chaos is the plan. Whoever is the last man standing gets the oil. Not you, of course. Bu$hCo-Cheneyburton. Or whoever the Carlyle Group subcontracts the Imperial State out to when the last man is standing.

Muslims fundamentalists are no better or worse than Christian or Jewish fundamentalists and no more or less bloody-handed.

Not that "they" don't hate you.

"They" being the very people who are using you to create a war for their own enrichment. They, meaning your real owners wouldn't let you or me eat at their table, or enter their mansions through the front door. Inappropriate, you know.

Land of the Brave and you're one of the Free, huh? I think you probably believe that. Your belief only confirms your conditioning. Your belief dignifies your words, but doesn't make them correct in the slightest.

Your belief, even at the price of being tired of your President, is essential for what the people who really own things have in store for the next 50 years or so as fossil fuels dwindle to nothing and energy becomes a commodity only the Right sort of people can afford to have.

Not you. Not me. Not real liberals. Not real conservatives. Only the new feudal lords of the Empire that once was a Republic.

No Hell below us
Above us, only sky

i am not being duplicitous, i am asking you to engage me/us. i sincerely want to have a conversation with you, so long as it is civil (and i think we can both agree on what that is.) let's agree to disagree, until we can agree, on something, if never everything.

i will come back to this, it's late and i've been out so i don't want to strain this fresh conversation with the burden of my softened mind. but i do, really and truly, thank you for being willing to take one small step towards the direction of working out these issues. you matter. i matter. our readers matter. if i can say one thing i hope you will hear, let me say this:

no one "people" is ever beyond redemption. (are you a christian? do you understand this idea?) even yours. even palestinians. you may not see it, but we are all "nothing" to those who have created these disparities between us. what matters is that we can have a free, truly free, exchange of ideas. i am giving you that chance, as much as i can, here at my blog. i'll do so at yours if you invite me. i am not afraid. and i love humanity. i hope you can say the same.

...more later. it's late, and a day at the waterpark with the nephew has left me a little tired. i hope you can forgive me for that.

Third, I joined the Army during the Clinton era.

Fourth, military pensions have little or nothing to do with which political party is in power.

signing up and taking the oath: clinton days- me too. ask me about the joke i told in boot camp about the clinton, during that first week.

and: i spoke not of military pensions. i know of those, very, very well. my grandfather ran a VA enterprise of great wealth and power, and when i was a pre-teen and teen, i worked with him in it. hint: it wasn't his pension that made him a millionaire. also, what did my SS tell us, during one silly company gathering? "they are waiting for you, even if you don't get re-upped." she was speaking of: corporate jobs. high paying, politically connected, jobs and opportunities. for those of us who were rejected at the three year point. you should know what i mean, if you're the real deal.

i was in OCS at Quantico, perhaps it was different from your experience. short version: i'd be rich, powerful and perhaps even happy now, if i'd only been able to overcome the fact that my company was led by an 1) apologist for pederasts (one of the leaders of our company, proven in court by a jury of his peers, on his own daughter, four years old) and 2) too honest for my own good. don't take my word for it, take the word of the last Gunney i spoke with as a person in uniform. i was told, and i still believe, that unless i could sacrifice the values that the Corps was founded upon, i would never be a good officer. it's of note that i got kicked out, while my bunkmate, daughter of a general, white and fat and slow, probably commands a company of marines in iraq today. most likely getting them killed, while she still obliviously mainfests the definition of "unsat" and is an arrogant detail-challenged fool who couldn't keep her locker together in bootcamp let alone send out a patrol that didn't get killed by her ignorance.

you must be able to tell what choice i made, if you're truly hard core. and i am sorrowful, because i wanted so much to be like the preceeding generations in my family. how i mourn that it could not be so. because i do believe in the nobility of the soul, and i mourn its loss, even in you, decurion. truly. your service is noted, and i want you to understand: i don't think it was wasted...not at least, by you. but your leaders? come with me down the path which shows how they have not only used you, but spit on you with a contempt that would raise you to bloodlust, as it has in me.

Decurion,
It looks like your military is very different than mine.

I post over at the same place as Chicago Dyke.

I wonder if you realize how much respect those of us -- and yes, I'm a veteran; and service is a tradition in my family, too -- have for you, and for the soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and Coast Guards?

It isn't that we don't want to hear what you have to say, or that we don't want you to survive your deployment, and return safe to your home, family, friends and neighbors.

We may not agree with you; but we will defend your right to speak your piece, hold your belief, stake your claim; and from the heart of the diversity that is our community, we reach one accord: we each regret the risk you must face, and we each beseech our own higher power for your safe return from this war.

You're not targets, to us -- although we may be to you. You're not ciphers, dehumanized "other", or the outright enemy. You're part of our family, one among our friends and neighbors. We know what you do, and what you put up with, for the sake of the flag you salute, the uniform you wear, and the honor with which you conduct yourself -- which brings honor to the uniform, the service, the flag, and the nation.

But we cannot let our acknowledgment of your skills, your experience, your point of view, your worth, your humanity, your soldierliness, blind us to the nature of the leadership that sends you, and so many others just like you, into harm's way and lies to you just as much as to us about why.

If you find what I have written uncivil, you are welcome to delete it. I will post this identical comment in the thread at corrente, and you can ask for its deletion there, as well.

"We are killers. But today, we choose not to kill." Capt. James T. Kirk

"No rendirse, muchachos!" William Barrett Travis, 1836

I saw a film some years ago where a man whom I think was Israeli set up a meeting between a group of Palestian and Israeli youngsters, pre teens as I remember.

There was one kid who was like the leader of the pack in the Palestinian group. At first, he didn't like the idea. He said to one of the other boys that maybe they would meet the person who had killed his little brother while he was tending sheep. The other boy pointed out that the two boys they were supposed to meet weren't old enough to have served yet. So the first boy pointed out that maybe their father or cousin had been his brother's killer. Despite all this, the Palestinians agreed to meet the Israelis.

The Israelis were two brother's It was enormously complicated just to arrange to have them drive into the occupied territories to meet the other children. But it happened. The Palestinians took them around but told them not to speak Jewish to each other because it might be dangerous. They went back to the Palestinian house, ate, played games and seemed to be on the verge of becoming friends.

Then the guy who made the film said it was time to talk issues. They had a spirited conversation. But both sides had been surprised. The Israelis thought all Palestinians were Hamasniks. The Palestinians didn't know Israeli kids could be just like them.

The boy who had been so against meeting the Israelis became anxious to remain in contact and almost desperate to broaden their friendship. He called them on the phone a lot. But as one of the Israeli boys said, they were busy with things like football and didn't have time to pursue the relationship.

Some time later, the film maker did a followup on the kids. The Israelis had gone into the army. The Palestinians has become bitter against Israelis once again. One girl in the group had decided to become a suicide bomber.

These children were not brutes. The one boy was, as I said, almost desperate to become friends with the Israelis. If their culture distorted them, certainly their culture was distorted by 40 years of occupation and rule by another country, not a peaceful country either.

about a minute earlier.
It was deleted there.

Our hostess declares she doesn't regard the 'service' of "Decurion" and others to be 'wasted.'
Mebbe, mebbe not.
I, too, am a veteran (USAF, '64-'68). I hold that all the lives so profligately spent in "my" war WERE wasted, that the 80k USer troops who died in it DID die in vain. I hold, too, that the 3500 USer troops killed (so far) in Iraq may have died in the uniform of their country, but they were killed in the interests of the oiligarchs, and pollutocrats, the fascists, and the corpoRat cabalists who cared not a whit whether they lived or died...
They did NOT perish for their 'country,' but for the vanity, greed, and power of the PNAC and a 'permanent Republican majority.'
That was NEVER worth the blood, the pain, or the life of a single citizen.

right?" in the case of every conflict in which the US has been a part since WWII, my answer is "no. those lives were wasted, and those deaths could've been avoided." a military can do many, many things that have nothing to do with killing, believe it or not. i look to the germans since WWII for a good example (not perfect, but good).

at the same time, i feel more and more inclined towards the idea that in this country, we must have another civil war. i don't want that to happen, but as time passes and the crimes of our oligarchic masters increase in scope and in terms of how evil they are, i find "peaceful" solutions less and less likely, and effective even were they tried. i want to be wrong, for although i have not seen combat, i have experienced enough physical violence and terrorism to know the cost of such upheaval. i guess i'll have to keep thinking about solutions, and listening to all of you, even the blogger who is the subject of this post.

is what other cultures he (?) regards as being as diseased as the Palestinian culture, and whether he anticipates using his military skills in those contexts....

No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.

No Hell below us
Above us, only sky

do you prefer the term casualty, or the term loss?

Because it is unrealistic to pretend that no harm is done, and no lasting damage results, no matter how dedicated the professional soldier, when soldiers are put into harm's way.

no one “people” is ever beyond redemption. (are you a christian? do you understand this idea?)

Anyone *can* be redeemed. However, in order to be redeemed, you must seek redemption and turn from your former ways.

For example, people make jokes about Confession and about the absolution of sin, yet don't understand it.

If I go to my priest and confess to the sin of...adultery, and I am absolved, it is implied that I will go out and commit that sin no more and, more importantly that I am truly repentant of my sinning.

Just saying "Ooops, Father...I fell into bed with someone who isn't my husband again!" and his speaking a few words over me does NOTHING.

Redemption has be wanted by the redeemed. Until the Palestinians want that redemption (to use a very inaccurate term) we can do nothing but try and care for those who escape the madness that has plagued that people.

Asked and answered. If you don't like my answer, rebut it. But asking the question over and over does nothing but annoy me.

On 12 September 1968, my best friend from when we were five died in Vietnam. He enlisted in the face of being drafted so he could select training as a corpsman, trying to do something positive in the midst of all that meaningless horror.

On his last day he spent the afternoon humping three wounded and one dead to a medivac LZ, a hundred meters up a hill in 90 degrees and 90% humidity while under fire. Back at base later that day he keeled over, blew out an aneurism, and died. He lived and died a hero, and a victim, in a pointless, wrong and horrible war.

Sp5 Kenneth Wedman was purely professional and extraordinarily brave. He was a good and true friend, the finest man I have ever known, and forty years on I still miss him so. That he was a victim of petty political manipulation does not in any way diminish who he was, as a person or as a soldier.

Don’t know who you think you are, Decurion, but here’s a news flash: nobody appointed you captain of the thought police. You may disagree, but you don’t get to tell other people how to express themselves. Ruth is a lady and deserves to be treated as one, with respect; please in future try to comport yourself as though you were a gentleman.

Dictionary.com:

victim. Noun
1. a person who suffers from a destructive or injurious action or agency: a victim of an automobile accident.

Check. The language is perfectly neutral: "Victim of an IED."

2. a person who is deceived or cheated, as by his or her own emotions or ignorance, by the dishonesty of others, or by some impersonal agency: a victim of misplaced confidence; the victim of a swindler; a victim of an optical illusion.

Check, especially "victim of a swindler." Again, the language is perfectly neutral: "The American people, and the troops, were the victims of the disinformation campaign waged by the Bush administration to bring on the Iraq War."

3. a person or animal sacrificed or regarded as sacrificed: war victims.
4.a living creature sacrificed in religious rites.

Can't speak to the last two, since I'm not religious.

And, in a system where there's civilian control of the military, and if democracy and the Constitution mean anything at all, a civilian has both the right, and the privilege to speak out with whatever words are needed to convey the idea that the administration has used, abused, and misused the (professional) military. If the connotation that offends is "victim" is "victimology," et cetera, that's not my intent, and I don't believe anyone else's.

P.S. I read the post. I see the argument you're making, and to me it looks like staying in Iraq forever. It's not worth it to stay there forever to "not lose," whatever that might mean. Humans are not always rational actors, and IIRC one place they are not rational is in refusing to cut their losses on a project when the sunk costs invested in it are significant. There's no reason for one more person to die in a war that was the wrong war to begin with, is doing the very reverse of protecting our freedoms, and is diverting our attention from the real enemies who need to be fought--and may even be making them stronger.

No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.

I do get to tell people not to patronize me. It's one of the wonderful things about freedom of expression.

I get to say, "You know, that way of expressing yourself is immensely offensive and I'd be thrilled if you didn't do it."

Note that, unlike many of the leftists I've run into, I expressed myself politely. I said 'please' and referred to refraining from that particular mode of expression as a 'huge favor.' I haven't received anything close to that level of courtesy here, but I am continuing to be civil.

Your definition of hero and mine are slightly incongruent. Frankly, if you honestly believe someone is fighting for an immoral cause, you cannot in the same breath call them a hero. It just doesn't work that way. I wouldn't call a Japanese soldier on Iwo a "hero" either because of the fundamental immorality of his cause. I can respect him as a tough Soldier and tactically and technically proficient, but I cannot say "hero".

Also note that one of the problems I have with trying to paint me with the victim brush is that I chose this profession with no coercion and no possibility that I could be forced into it involuntarily. I have re-enlisted twice because I love the work. You can praise me as defender of your country or you can condemn me as a willing tool of imperialism, but you cannot pat me on the head and pretend I am either ignorant or confused and just a 'victim'.

comforts you.

But this:
I am not saying, however, that anyone who doesn't support finishing the job in Iraq supports the terrorists. No one who was raised in America and remains mentally stable (and not a Muslim, but I repeat myself) could support folks who cut off other people's heads for kicks. The terrorists are horrible bastards, and not even Murtha and other collaborators really, deep down, think they are really cool people. doesn't augur well for your objectivity.

You think of yourself as a professional soldier.
Good for you.
You come off as a mercenary in service of prejudice.
Not so good, for anybody.

Call me arrogant if you wish. It's a pot and kettle thing.

I am biased. Biased heavily. I'm rather in favor of us winning, them not winning, and America not resembling the Middle East in any way.

I don't pretend to be objective. Your grandfather probably wasn't objective about Nazis in 1943 either.

Surely a tragic hero is possible? A good man can, for whatever good reasons, end up fighting on the side of evil. If that were not so, civil wars would not leave such lasting wounds.

No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.

Is Clausewitz really the strategic thinker who is best fitted to illuminate our current situation?

Why? Are there not others?

No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.

Not staying in Iraq forever. Staying until we win.

Win is defined as Iraqis being able to run Iraq.

You don't think there is progress in that direction?

Let me give you two links. Note the dates on these articles.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/08/weekin...

Because I happen to know Clausewitz and like Clausewitz, and I think his observations remain true. Are you actually going to rebut my use of Clausewitz?

That's like asking why Shakespeare is still taught in high school. Yes, there have been playwrights who wrote since he did. But he did it so well that an understanding of Shakespeare is necessary to understand those who came after him.

Victim.

Unwitting tool of fascism.

Likely paid troll.

No Hell below us
Above us, only sky

You can not "win" without genocide.

The game being played is combat until Cheney & Company controls all the oil. In Iraq. In Iran, if we let him. And eventually Saudi Arabia, if he can.

In fact, there's all that Russian oil and the people RedRum sfeld regarded as our inevitable enemy, China.

Hey Decurion, good luck when you "professional soldiers" have to take on half the human race. You know, the half that already has all the liens on the American financial industry. You just might find your checks start bouncing.

Woops, no problem... you'll just fight for the other side, then, right? 'Cause you're a professional.

No Hell below us
Above us, only sky

Leave aside that now we're recruiting from Saddam's Sunni base. To oversimplify, I'm sure:

I see in 2006 an article that says Anbar's not so good.

I see an article in 2007 that says Anbar's doing better because we're funding the Sunnis and giving them weapons, and that as a result the province is calm.

First, I'm radically skeptical of the second article, because the propaganda from the higherups is really getting thick these days, and Burns (along with Gordon) are part of that. Disinformation is part of war, I would think, even or perhaps especially in the heimat, as the Times ombudsman points out, ironically in the very same issue as the article you cite. So, I'm afraid that as evidence, an article from Judy Miller's former workplace can have very little weight with someone who's followed the stories.

Second, I don't see this as proof of winning by your definition of "Iraqis governing themselves." Surely it's equally possible that by backing the Sunnis, we're going to end up splitting Iraq between Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds?

Third, is there any reason to believe that this is anything more than temporary? (Bringing us back, again, to the issue of "forever." I say, "What happens when the surge rolls back? It can't continue forever, absent a draft." You say (asssuming I'm right on absent...) "It will continue until our Sunni clients have control of..." I says "And how long will that be?" And so on...

Finally, suppose for a moment that the success stories aren't planted disinformation, that the success is really due to changed tactics by our military, and that the success will be lasting (for some definition of lasting): Why did it take us so long to get the point where we could do the right thing, and have the people who did the wrong thing been held accountable, through some sort of "lessons learned" proceess? Because if that hasn't happened, it looks to me like there are systemic problems that will prevent success, yet will leave us there forever (the worst of all possible outcomes).

NOTE None of the "tinfoil hat" stuff on disinformation, please. I can't imagine that you haven't heard of the White House Iraq Group, but if you haven't, study up.

No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.

“Never, never refer to a professional Soldier as a victim.

Ever.”

Threatening tone, belligerent, nasty, ungentlemanly. Note especially the tag-on single word imperative, unacceptable in polite conversation, especially to a lady. You, sir, are no sort of a gentleman, and lack both common decency and honor.

We no doubt differ in our definition of hero. What my friend did, saving the lives and recovering the bodies of his comrades in the face of great danger to himself, all the while aware that the war itself was pointless, is to me a far greater heroic act than if it had come from someone who blindly believed the lies about keeping the world safe for democracy.

Your whole previous comment “Yawn” was telling other people what they cannot say and how little you think of the opinions of others; sad and desperate behavior. The people here are not your enemies, and you have no reason to treat them with such contempt.

I did take the trouble to read several selections from your blog. You are an angry, frightened man, and I am sorry that you and your family have been put through enough to make you the way you are. Please get some help.

Any of you guys arrayed against Decurion ever hear of ad hominem?!? Sheesh. Logic is a really valuable tool to use.

I don't think he's an outright merc, yet.

But this statement of his:
I don’t pretend to be objective. Your grandfather probably wasn’t objective about Nazis in 1943 either.

juxtaposes rather oddly with his calling me arrogant, in light of the assumption it reveals about my family history.

I didn't have Prescott Bush for my granddad; neither of my grandfathers owned financial empires or family estates in Connecticut/Massachusetts. My grandfathers had dry land farms in West Texas. They didn't raise their sons to be bankers, insurance agents, stockbrokers or CIA men or Congressmembers; their boys went from jobs with the WPA and CCC off to war -- or, in the case of the ones who didn't pass their induction physicals in 1942, into shipyards and aircraft factories. They came home to jobs on farms or ranches, in factories or on the railroads, with the Post Office or the County Extension service. Their grandchildren, my generation -- didn't grow up to be President or governor, either -- we made something worthwhile of ourselves. Teachers, ranchers, mechanics, welders, nurses, a Merchant Marine officer -- but none of either generation became lawyers or politicians, and although many of us served in uniform, none of us was a "professional soldier."

None of us is a 'victim' in the classic 'poor me' sense, either; but all of us have seen bad things and survived losses, and if that makes us arrogant, so be it.

Life's not a zero-sum game, and adopting the attitude that any important endeavor in life must be a zero sum game is accepting defeat before you start.

Know Clausewitz? Um, no. Read him, yes. But I don't claim personal knowledge of a soldier who died before the War Between the States. He did say one thing that stuck in my mind -- wars are fought by people.

Maybe it's necessary to make people angry and frightened so they'll participate in war.

I happen to view the Anbar articles far more favorably because I spent 8 months of my last tour in Ramadi.

Kind of gives me a better perspective on what happens in that province than the New York Times ombudsman has.