Via Ruth a great little piece that I missed in the excrementally fabulous WaPo. Here’s the fun part:

Soltz, the group’s intense 29-year-old co-founder who served in Iraq in 2003, displayed a fiery impatience with the procedural morass that has paralyzed the Senate. “I don’t need some fancy Senate talk about why they can’t vote,” he said in an interview. “We just want a vote. We need a vote that tells the president that his strategy is not working.”

In several news conferences, Soltz accused McConnell of “aiding the enemy” by allowing the Bush administration to build up troops in Iraq at the expense of the hunt for Osama bin Laden. “We are not fighting the war on terrorism, we are in the middle of a civil war,” he said, referring to Iraq. “Meanwhile, the guy who attacked this country on 9/11 is living in a cave in Afghanistan.”  Read more 

History is such a hoot. From an interesting blog called Civil War Power Tour (don’t ask; just go read Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz to understand the name) we find that the phenomena of Chest-Beating War Fans who do their part for the Glorious Cause on that vital battlefield called the Home Front rather than waste their tremendous talents on the battlefield dates back to a much earlier time. This is by Oliver Wendell Holmes, and he called the Yellow Elephant The Sweet Little Man:

Dedicated to the Stay-at-Home Rangers.

Now while our soldiers are fighting our battles,
Each at his post to do all that he can,
Down among Rebels and contraband chattels,
What are you doing, my sweet little man?

All the brave boys under canvas are sleeping;
All of them pressing to march with the van,
Far from the home where their sweethearts are weeping;
What are you waiting for, sweet little man?

You with the terrible warlike moustaches,
Fit for a colonel or chief of a clan,
You with the waist made for sword-belts and sashes,
Where are your shoulder-straps, sweet little man?  Read more 

To earn a Navy Cross the act to be commended must be performed in the presence of great danger or at great personal risk and must be performed in such a manner as to render the individual highly conspicuous among others of equal grade, rate, experience, or position of responsibility.

Here’s how: James Webb, running for Senator from Virginia as a Democrat, refused to allow his campaign to reference his Navy Cross.

I don’t claim to have inside knowledge of the workings of the Webb campaign, and it is entirely likely that fear of swiftboaters was not among Webb’s reasons for avoiding running on his record of courage under fire.  Read more