sisu

Having a ball

Tiny focuses the evil eye on her prey, a green superball she plucked out of her superball bowl just after breakfast this morning. Our royal blue, toasty warm L.L. Bean winter jacket hung on a chair (left) and green ties of Tuck's fab diningroom chair covers frame her fearful symmetry.

As our treasured fellow catblogger Susan of Mind of Mog wrote long ago, it's "time for some kitty pics cause they are so cute, no other reason."

It's notable how the prey -- whether superball or live mouse -- always brings out the classical feline body language. Above, Tiny hunches down in preparation for going in for the kill.

When we tossed the ball back in her direction, she did the playing-for-time batting-the-prey thing.

Finally she lunged, going for the jugular.

"It just doesn't make sense to me"

"Troops here say they are increasingly frustrated by American criticism of the war. Many take it personally, believing it is also criticism of what they've been fighting for," reports CBS embed Richard Engel. The YouTube video of Engel's report (above) provides a perfect counterpoint to MoveOn.org's VoteVet TV ad.

"When it comes to the war in Iraq, America's divided," goes MoveOn.org's new cut-and-run VoteVets TV ad -- "a montage of Iraq war veterans against escalation" -- scheduled to run during the Super Bowl if they manage to raise $91,000 over the next couple of days:

On one hand, you've got two thirds of the American people. A bipartisan majority in congress, the Iraq Study Group. And veterans like us, all opposed to the escalation. On the other hand, there's George Bush, who supports escalation. If you support escalation, you don't support the troops.

That last bit is debatable, but the assertion that the Iraq Study Group doesn't support escalation is just plain wrong. 'Guess our Soros-funded [is the old boy still secretly backing this "grassroots" group?] friends on the wrong side of the aisle had already put their ad in the can by the time ISG co-chair James Addison Baker III told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday to give the President's "surge plan" time to work before declaring it a failure:

The general [David Petraeus] you confirmed 81-0 just the day before yesterday, this is his idea. He's a supporter of it. He's now the commander on the ground in Iraq. Give it a chance.

Good for him. Meanwhile, whether or not MoveOn's ad makes it to the Super Bowl, it's already all over YouTube, posted by Presidential hopeful Wesley Clark among others. Can you say preaching to the choir? As for production values and emotional impact, its visual device of having one vet lift his right arm and say "on the one hand" and then having an amputee lift his left arm -- amputated below the elbow -- saying "on the other hand" struck us as effective on a gut level but somehow disrespectful. It takes all kinds.

On the other side of the debate, a news clip of a report by NBC [!] embed Richard Engel of brief interviews with men currently on the front in Iraq has caught fire on the right side of the blogosphere. As a member in good standing of that particular choir, we say "Hallelujah!" The NBC report's you-are-there, unrehearsed quality struck us as more authentic -- and hence more profoundly compelling -- than the obviously staged and scripted VoteVets ad. As one of the soldiers told the reporter:

One thing I don't like is when people back home say they support the troops, but they don't support the war. If they're going to support us, support us all the way.

"It just don't make sense to me" says 21-year-old Specialist Tyler Johnson.

Since you went away

Our darling blogfriend MB of Miss Kelly made our day yesterday, presenting us at the meeting of our sub rosa cabal at Jill's enchanted hideaway with Papa Ratzi's Castel Gondolfo calendar, a thing we had stumbled upon a couple of months back, told her about, and then she, having a connection in the heart of the beast, was able to purchase copies for ourselves and a few other select personages.

"Since you Went Away" is the name of the 1944 WWII-era tearjerker we were watching this afternoon as we were imailing with our sis. She -- who, like Cosmo in "Moonstruck" knows everything -- alerted us that this old-fashioned sob story was one of the original sources of Airplane! containing the scene where the love-struck young woman -- Jennifer Jones in the full glory of her radiant youth -- ran after the train that would take her soldier boy off to his death, catching his heirloom watch in her hands as the choo choo pulled away from the station. Teenager Shirley Temple played Jones's kid sister, and Claudette Colbert was their mom. Joseph Cotten was the man in uniform who tried to turn Claudette's head as she nobly kept the homefires burning for her soldier husband -- never seen in the movie -- at the front. You've heard of Hollywood endings, and this one ended with a telegram telling the pure-as-the-driven-snow Colbert her hubby was coming home. As our sis suggested: 

BUT . . . tell me this . . . do you think Claudette and Joseph could have resisted such temptation?

Cat prints in the light snowcover animate the stoop his morning. What if we could read our own comings and goings and thereby our intentions in some similarly black-and-white medium?

No.

The "rest of the world" and its discontents

The biggest difference between human children and what some call child substitutes -- the best friend of our salad days, Carol Pine, famously said with more than a grain of truth that for many of us children are ANIMAL substitutes -- is that cats take no prisoners. Children are at our mercy, but cats are always in control. Babe, above, applies the think system to extract kitty treats out of his human familiars.

"Now we know our leaders either lied to us or hid the truth. Because of our actions, the rest of the world sees us as a bully and a liar," intoned 12-year-old robot Moriah Arnold at yesterday's give-peace-a-chance-lite rally on the Mall. How poignant to see our fellow Americans on the left side of the aisle using the very same child-rearing indoctrination techniques that Jihadis use to twist the psyches of their young into hatred of the other from the cradle. Horrific that "the other" in this case is their fellow Americans. Don't you love it when people know -- and care beyond any principles they might or might not have themselves --  what "the rest of the world" thinks? Pariahs happen. Just ask John Kerry.

You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!

No cat worth his salt cares a fig about what "the world" thinks. Only a pandering politician -- Is there any other kind? Isn't that redundant? -- would ever think of things in those terms. Yes you, John Warner, Susan Collins, Chuck Hagel, Olympia Snow, Norm Coleman, Sam Brownback et al. The rest of the world? How about what we Republicans who voted you into office think? Just asking.

Reading between the lines

"The Schoolgirl. A hope for education, which was banned for girls under the Taliban and crippled under the Mujahidin era (1992 - 1996)," says the Afghan Magazine caption to this enchanting image, reminiscent of that long-ago National Geo cover girl but with a sugar-and-spice gleam of optimism in the young girl's eye. You're only as good as you treat your women, as Western Civ proves over and over in both word and deed. Eat your heart out, Mullah Omar. (© Pia Torelli photo)

"When I get a pair of glasses, I shall be able to read," goes the magic thinking of illiterate Afghanis reported by Army Maj. Gen. Benjamin Freakley, commander of the Combined Joint Task Force-76 and commanding general of the the 10th Mountain Division in Afghanistan. We caught the Maj. Gen. live this morning on C-Span via video link speaking to reporters in the Pentagon. The disconnect of Afghanis dreaming of instantaneous literacy called to mind the magic thinking of some of our national leaders, who are frantically touting toothless resolutions against the President's "way forward" in Iraq even as they confirm the appointment of his choice of Gen. Petraeus to carry out the plan. Glenn Reynolds explains:

If Petraeus succeeds, they'll be bragging that they voted for him. If he fails, they'll note that they opposed the surge. As John F. Kennedy noted, political courage is scarcer than physical courage.

We were encouraged to hear our new Secretary of Defense, Robert M. Gates -- still enjoying a honeymoon with the press -- echoing General Petraeus's and VP Cheney's comments in the DODs press availability yesterday:

Q: Mr. Secretary, Senator Lieberman said the Senate resolution opposing the 21,000 increase in troops would offer some encouragement to the enemy. Would you agree with that?

SEC. GATES: Well, I think it's pretty clear that a resolution that, in effect, says that the general going out to take command of the arena shouldn't have the resources he thinks he needs to be successful certainly emboldens the enemy and our adversaries.

I think it's hard to measure that with any precision, but it seems pretty straightforward that any indication of flagging will in the United States gives encouragement to those folks. And I'm sure that that's not the intent behind the resolutions, but I think it may be the effect.

Unlike our beloved shoot-from-the-hip Rummy, the admirable new man in town is more of a steel-hand-in-a-velvet-glove type. His kinder and gentler manner may be just the thing to disarm the Administration's militarily challenged critics, but the message is the same. Dr. Sanity has the diagnosis:

. . . the Democrats (e.g. like Nancy Pelosi in Baghdad proclaiming she "supports the troops") and the clueless antiwar crowd . . . seem to have a serious problem in understanding why a person's actions speak louder than their words . . .

The discrepancies that lie between actions and words are most revealing. After 30 years of doing this professionally, I am never surprised at the degree to which people are able to delude themselves . . .

That is why a disgruntled commenter on my blog (who always wears such a "happy face" no matter what she is saying) can insist that it is "nonsense" for me to observe the reckless behavior of the Democrats and the political left as they do everything possible to encourage, protect, and enable the enemies that are killing our troops; even as they proclaim -- without the slightest awareness of irony -- that they support those troops.

No, they don't want our troops to be killed, but their behavior facilitates and encourages it.

Ditto their facilitators in the media, whose frequently unhelpful chatter, "truthiness" and outright lies were best characterized by our own Donald "unknown unknowns" Rumsfeld three years back, when his crisp, take-no-prisoners prose was fashionable enough to be the subject of a Slate compilation of "The Poetry of D.H. Rumsfeld":

It doesn't seem to bother people, they don't --
It's printed in the press.
The world thinks all these things happen.
They never happened.
Everyone's so eager to get the story
Before in fact the story's there
That the world is constantly being fed
Things that haven't happened.

The expression "our troops" grates when it rolls off the tongues of those do-as-I-say, not-as-I-do armchair generals. CNNs in-house scold, Lou Dobbs is among the worst offenders. But for all-time tendentious, anti-American rhetoric, no one holds a candle to our own Taxachusetts junior Sen. John "Stuck-in-Iraq" Kerry, who outdid himself this day, telling an international audience of poobahs in Davos that the land of the free and the home of the brave -- under the leadership of you-know-who, natch -- had become "a sort of international pariah." No comment necessary.

Why do sausages have to be so delicious?

They may be raised for our plates and destined for the slaughter, but that doesn't justify farm animals' being allowed to suffer physical and psychological abuse while they live. (Sow with piglets at Pig Breeding Facility at Rabacca, St. Vincent)

"This is an earthquake in the pig industry," Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of The Humane Society of the US, said yesterday:

Smithfield Foods Inc., the nation's largest pork producer, announced today it will phase out the confinement of pigs in gestation crates over the next decade.

Gestation crates are 2-foot by 7-foot metal cages that house breeding pigs. The sows have a gestation period of four months, and are in the crates for nearly their entire pregnancy. After giving birth, they are re-impregnated and placed back in the crates, enduring perhaps eight or 10 successive pregnancies in the crates before the animals are reproductively "spent." The crates are so restrictive that the animals can't even turn around for months on end. Pigs confined in gestation crates suffer both leg and joint problems along with psychosis resulting from extreme boredom and frustration.

PETA is not where we're at. Their leftist techniques are at least as bad -- more so because of their hypocrisy -- as the amoral industrial animal-cruelty techniques they attack. For them it's not really about the animals but about dissing capitalism. You've probably heard of the latest scandal of PETA workers' murdering a mother cat and her kittens they'd promised to find homes for. We couldn't bear to read about it so don't know the details. Our point is that a humane society can raise food animals humanely and even lead them to the slaughter humanely. The thought of those pregnant sows trapped in crates where they could not move about nor socialize with their fellow pregnant ladies breaks our heart. Think Charlotte's Web. Pigs are sentient beings with rich psychological lives akin to our own. Why do sausages -- not to mention crown roasts -- have to be so delicious?

Then there are our fellow human beings whose abuse of animals -- not to mention other human beings -- knows no bounds, as the latest atrocity in Baghdad attests:

A bomb hidden in a box holding pigeons tore through a crowded pet and livestock market today, killing at least 14 people and wounding dozens, police said, in a blast that left the carcasses of dead birds,dogs and other animals scattered on the blood-soaked ground.

"My friends and I rushed to the scene where we saw burned dead bodies, pieces of flesh and several dead expensive puppies and birds," he said.

Ali Nassir said dead animals were scattered on the blood-soaked ground and several snakes, monkeys and birds had been let loose from their cages as ambulances and police cars converged on the scene.

For the perpetrators, other creatures -- whether homo sapiens or other species -- are mere props in their all-about-me fantasies.

A blindfolded dog sits on a balance beam at a dog training ground of the Belarussian Defence Ministry near the village of Kolodishchi outside Minsk January 25, 2007. After completing the training the dogs will fulfill a variety of tasks in the military such as seeking explosives, mines or drugs.

The opposite of the agribusiness farmers' impersonal abuse of sows -- not to mention Islamofascists' impersonal abuse of everyone -- is the psychologically rewarding one-on-one relationship between man and beast as in the photo above where a person takes advantage of a dog's desire for interesting work based upon canine proclivities to promote human goals for their mutual benefit. Look at the smile on that doggie's face.

Scratch me

Babe meatloafs on the studio rug in a zen moment during the countdown to supper this afternoon, with Tuck's brilliant new scratching post in the middle ground and Chris's Xmas gift of a couple of years back, Cationary, in the foreground atop Tuck's oaken coffee table made from wood obtained from the pews of a Chelsea synagogue way back when. The table top suggests a sailing ship's hatch grid, reports Tuck. It's served us well for decades of Chelsea entertaining.

A bit of ankle -- hand-carved ball-and-claw feet -- as a preview of Tuck's totally awesome new scratching post, a one-of-a-kind monstrosity masterpiece incorporating the ten-parted post modeled after an early America's Cup mast crafted by the Tuckster years ago and now refurbished and combined with a new base. When he first told us about it, we were skeptical, but now that it's a fait accompli, stained with cherry, varnished and fitted up with block and tackle and lines, it's looking mighty ship shape. So far no interest from the cats, who seem to prefer the carpet-covered scratching post on the other side of the room.

Update: More post scratchers and other creatures bright and beautiful at Friday Ark #123 at Modulator.

Update II: A couple of technical footnotes from Tuck in the comments:

1. "early America's Cup" mast in this case refers to the J Boat.

2. Any cat or other being who uses this piece to scratch upon will be dealt with quickly and severely. (I've already spoken w/ T&B, as the photo illustrates.)

Sir, yes sir!

A vicious circle of shortsighted sanctimony

“By the time we reached the embassy, the gates were shuttered and armed Marines were standing guard above the concrete walls . . . Thousands of desperate Vietnamese, screaming and begging, were trying to climb the walls and get through the coils of barbed wire, only to be pushed back into the street by none-too-gentle rifle butts,” wrote  Newsweek reporter Loren Jenkins of our countrmen's ignominious cut-and-run exit from Saigon when the city fell to the North Vietnamese in April of 1975. (Photo unattributed)

"Wolf, Wolf, I simply don't accept the premise of your question. I just think it's hogwash," Dick Cheney told Wolf Blitzer yesterday in a vintage Cheney interview that left CNNs top dog running for cover with his tail between his legs. Dazzled by the meretricious controversy-lite surrounding lesbian Cheney daughter Liz's pregnancy, MSM outlets widely reported the interview, citing the wrong soundbite. The real story was our Dick's observation that grandstanding congressional opposition to the President's course correction in Iraq -- popularly known as "the way forward" -- gives aid and comfort to you-know-who:

The pressure is from some quarters to get out of Iraq . . . If we were to do that, we would simply validate the terrorists' strategy that says the Americans will not stay to complete the task, that we don't have the stomach for the fight.

The Vice President recounted to a nervously blinking Blitzer the cause-and-effect dynamics of a cut-and run policy (video available here):

Remember with me what happened in Afghanistan. The United States was actively involved in Afghanistan in the 80s, supported the effort against the Soviets. The Mujahideen prevailed, everybody walked away, and in Afghanistan within relatively short order the Taliban came to power, they created a safe haven for al Queda, training camps were established where some 20,000 terrorists trained in the late 90s. And out of Afghanistan, because we walked away and ignored it, we had the attack on the USS Cole, the attack on the embassies in East Africa and 9/11 . . . That is what happens when we walk away from a situation like that in the Middle East.

As we wrote in the comments to Jules Crittendon's rousing review of the President's SOTU at Pajamas Media yesterday:

Did you notice the irony of the words "it would not be like us to leave our promises unkept, our friends abandoned, and our own security at risk"? It would not be like GW, but it is all too reminiscent of recent administrations.

Our friend Neo of neo-neocon -- a member of PJMs therapeutic Sanity Squad -- picked up on the irony in her own excellent analysis of the President's speech:

Unfortunately, one of the reasons we are facing the situation we're in today is that, in recent decades, too often it has been exactly "like us" to do just that. Vietnam, for example. The aftermath of the first Gulf War. And now the constant drumbeat in Congress about Iraq. Our enemies are neither blind, deaf, nor dumb. That's why Saddam played footage of those helicopters on the Saigon roof before our recent invasion of Iraq. He knew that America lacked patience, and he wanted his people to know it. And he was correct.

In the same blogpost, Neo diagnoses the patient and worries about the prognosis:

I wonder whether the unrelentingly gloomy prognostications in the press, the short attention span of modern life, the lack of knowledge of history, and the frivolity reflected in the overheard comments with which I began this piece ["I'm not going to watch Bush tonight. It offends me to hear him. I'll just listen to Al Franken tomorrow and he'll tell me all I need to know."] don't make it impossible to sustain anything like the sort of mindset we are going to need for this battle.

"Of course the enemy would take comfort from any Senate declaration that Mr. Bush lacks domestic support," notes the Wall Street Journal in another must-read for those of us disgusted with the shenanigans of our so-called leaders who continue to fiddle while Rome burns:

If they were serious and had the courage of their convictions, they'd attempt to cut off funds for the Iraq effort. But that would mean they would have to take responsibility for what happens next. By passing "non-binding resolutions," they can assail Mr. Bush and put all of the burden of success or failure on his shoulders.

This is not to say that the resolution won't have harmful consequences, at home and abroad. At home, it further undermines public support for the Iraq effort. Virginia Republican John Warner even cites a lack of public support to justify his separate non-binding resolution of criticism for Mr. Bush's troop "surge." But public pessimism is in part a response to the rhetoric of failure from political leaders like Mr. Warner. The same Senators then wrap their own retreat in the defeatism they helped to promote.

A vicious circle of shortsighted sanctimony. We're still steaming from the stupidity of the CW that tells us there's something wrong with "staying the course." Thank God General Petraeus will be promoted to four stars and confirmed by the full Senate today. Just in time to keep her steady as she goes.

"We have a profile we're looking for"

When a man loves a woman . . . Sen. John Warner has no shame, as his absurd marriage to Liz Taylor in 1976 (above) and his pathetic attempt at intimidating Lt. General David Petraeus yesterday attest. (©2005 TopFoto / AP)

"Addressing the crisis in leadership among American boys and young men" was the topic of pc-lite Esquire author Tom Chiarella's brave new article last summer, "The Problem with Boys." The soon-to-be commander of U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq, Lt. General David Petraeus, was one of the earnest author's expert witnesses. We stumbled upon the thoughtful if somewhat annoyingly naive piece as we were getting up to speed on the man of the hour that Thomas P.M. Barnett in another Esquire article called "the closest thing the Army has to its own Lawrence of Arabia." Chiarella skirts delicately around the edges of the insidious Marxist feminist anti-boys-will-be-boys movement of the last few decades that has turned Mother Nature's "snakes and snails and puppy dogs' tails" into carriers of a "disorder" that must be kept at bay by the administration of Ritalin and other inadequately tested drugs that kill the soul and may precipitate murderous acts [see Columbine]. Speaking of a young, rudderless friend named Gerald, Ciarella -- seemingly channeling John "Stuck-in-Iraq" Kerry -- writes:

He's got no way to grab on to the culture of work. Nowhere to go, except Iraq maybe. They keep raising the bonus for enlistment; they keep tempting him to put himself in the mix. I always think he's a bag of flesh to them, a bullet stopper.

Reading that military-culture-challenged bit of drivel, we gagged and nearly clicked away in disgust, but remembering that Lt. General Petraeus had brought us to the site, we read on and were duly rewarded with Chiarella's reportage of the General's take:

I tell him about the boys I know, about how I'm concerned that the Army may be the only option for a kid like Gerald. "That's the problem," he says. "It may not be an option for him. We have a profile we're looking for; we need high school graduates who are physically fit and driven by the desire for self-improvement. We need men who are prepared to be better soldiers.

"I see the same things you do. The numbers are declining among boys," he says, clearing his throat. "I always call them men.

"What boys need," says Petraeus, "are role models, parental supervision, encouragement to pursue excellence in all that they do, especially in education, where we must do whatever is necessary to keep them in school." Old stuff, but tried and true and often lost amidst today's multiculti pc cacaphony:

They need direction to stay on the straight and narrow, a push to participate in athletics and extracurricular activities, help to pursue a healthy lifestyle, recognition that they must be accountable for their actions, and reinforcement of good performance.

We couldn't help but think of those aging Peter-Pan boys -- and girls -- in the Senate who made such fools of themselves yesterday when they bypassed the opportunity to ask General Petraeus to educate them -- and us -- with his vast store of knowledge about the subject at hand, the "way forward" in Iraq. Instead they used the opportunity of Petraeus's confirmation hearing to -- what else? -- grandstand at will. Our favorite exchange came after Sen. Lieberman asked Petraeus whether Senate resolutions condemning White House Iraq policy "would give the enemy some comfort":

Petraeus agreed they would, saying, "That's correct, sir."

Liz Taylor's ex, Sen. John Warner, went ballistic, warning Petraeus not to step on prima donnas' toes:

We're not a division here today of patriots who support the troops and those who are making statements and working on resolutions that could be translated as aiding and abetting the enemy. We're trying to exercise the fundamental responsibilities of our democracy and how this nation has two co-equal branches of the government, each bearing its own responsibilities.

I hope that this colloquy has not entrapped you into some responses that you might later regret. I wonder if you would just give me the assurance that you'll go back and examine the transcript as to what you replied with respect to certain of these questions and review it, because we want you to succeed.

We expect intimidation from the left and from campaign finance "reform" types like John McCain. How disappointing to see John Warner going wobbly when the going gets tough. As Gen. Petraeus told Esquire author Tom Chiarella, "We have a profile we're looking for." Would that our fellow citizens who vote these people into office had such standards.

"Hard is not hopeless"

"Progress will require determination and difficult U.S. and Iraqi actions, especially the latter, as ultimately the outcome will be determined by the Iraqis. But hard is not hopeless," Lt. Gen. David Petraeus told the Senate Armed Forces Committee in his confirmation hearing this morning. Petraeus's introductory statement.

"I do wish this was not just on C-Span 3 but on national television," so more people would watch, commented Sen. Lieberman this morning during the Senate Armed Forces Committee confirmation hearing of Lt. General David Petraeus -- "one of the Army’s most daring and original thinkers" according to Thomas P.M. Barnett of Esquire --  the President's choice for commander of U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. We couldn't agree more. While confirmation of the widely admired "soldier-statesman" who "spent the last year supervising the re-writing of the Army's counterinsurgency manual" seems all but assured, the hearing itself was most edifying, a fascinating snapshot of the world's most deliberative body in action. Other than Hillary, who appeared to be practicing for her 2009 State of the Union speech, the senators -- even our own normally abusive Sen. Ted -- were on their best behavior. A few highlights [watching C-Span 3 online, we had a few blackouts so didn't catch it all]:

Our favorite Democrat, Sen. Lieberman used the opportunity to chide fellow Senators from both sides of the aisle who are trying to hobble the Administration's new "plan forward" before it's even out of the gate:

If, God forbid, you are unable to succeed, then there will be plenty of time for resolutions of disapproval. I believe we can succeed, and I appeal to my colleagues today to give you the chance -- perhaps the last chance -- to succeed.

RINO Sen. Collins, protesting perhaps a bit too much, attempted a defense of her own sponsorship of the Republican version of a resolution of disapproval [rough transcription]:

I must comment about what my colleague, Senator Lieberman said about the impact of a passage of a resolution and whether that would convey something to the enemy that the American people are divided.

The resolution that I have been working on with Senators Nelson and Warner is very clear in expressing support for our troops, and I don't think it's going to come as any surprise to the enemy that the American people are deeply divided over strategy.

Kind of lame. We think it was Petraeus himself [we missed the exact moment but heard about it from a TV commentator later on] who reminded the senators that the enemy -- "determined, adaptable, barbaric" -- finds aid and comfort when members of the president's own party appear to go wobbly.

In response to Sen. Lindsey Graham's question of why reinlistment rates are so high, Petraeus spoke about the military ethic and the importance of being part of something larger than oneself:

The reason I and others have stayed in is that we like the people that we do what we do with.

Are you paying attention, John "Stuck-in-Iraq" Kerry?

President Sen. Clinton was in full finger-pointing harridan mode:

I want to begin by associating my remarks with those of Sen. Collins. The Congress was supine under a Republican majority . . . and the President and his team refused to adapt to changing circumstances on the ground . . . and the failure of Iraqis to step up and take responsibility . . .You [Petraeus] wrote the book [the Army's counterinsurgency manual], but the policy is not by the book. You are being asked to square the circle. In the absence of the kind of full-court press we had in Bosnia . . . I see nothing coming from this Administration that it is willing to pursue such a strategy now. They won't talk to bad people, and it is bad people you talk to and not your friends to try to further your goals.

Get it? Foreign policy was the picture of perfection during the Clinton Co-Presidency, and if it weren't for that do-nothing Republican Congress -- not to mention the impotent Bush -- we'd be sipping lattes in downtown Baghdad as we speak. In the ball-busting manner that is her trademark, the junior senator from New York even managed to imply that "the Army's own Lawrence of Arabia" is a eunuch, carrying out a policy he doesn't believe in. His response, an exquisite counterpoint to her question:

I'm doing this out of a sense of service. This is not about being beholden to anyone. I will give you my best professional military advice, and if people don't like it, they can find someone else to give best military advice.

Class will out.

Update: Pajamas Media links.