From this armchair general, you are most welcome, Mr. No One, sir, and in return I thank you for the condescension.

No, I didn't see that particular report, but I have read and viewed many like it during the last three years, and I fail to see where it speaks to my point -- that it's "Ground Hog Day" for the US military.

To supply a purloined anecdote of my own, the presidential historian, Doris Kearns Goodwin, recounts the story of her soldier son who entered Bagdad, early days after the fall of Hussein, filled with the flush of victory and looking forward with great enthusiasm to helping, in his own small way, the people of Iraq build a viable, decent society. He was greeted with grateful smiles and pats on the back and a returned enthusiasm and optimism.

But all too quickly reality reared its ugly head, and instead of helping in the construction of a middle-eastern utopia which was to be the beacon of the new order, he found himself day after tedious day standing guard at a check point where he frisked civilians, and night after deadly night with his unit patrolling the bleak, ruined streets of the city, targets, hoping to draw fire so that they could kill the unidentifiable enemy.

And, no, unlike the little band of merry neocons with the standard-issue rose-colored glasses who direct this Administration's every blunder, I have no idea how this will turn out. Perhaps that is best left to the people who occupy that little part of the world the retreating imperial British once-upon-a-time decided should be a nation. Or maybe those backward people are feeble of mind, or perhaps they are hapless children who's hands need to be held by big brother while they cross an unfamiliar and dangerous street.

Also, in my opinion -- screw the trains and your sarcasm -- Mussolini was a preening fool and a murderous son-of-a-bitch!

A final observation, sir -- you are an articulate guy, but your views would be much more effective if they were presented with a little less school-yard-bully attitude.