This brain can fly a plane, but can it coach a football team?

Hey, if the Bengals can win on Monday Night Football...

"BILLLIED!"

*** Ace has some worthy thoughts on war and political will, including a bonus spanking of Andrew Sullivan ...

Wouldn't Andrew Sullivan welcome a spanking?

Ugh. Sorry.

Rat brain-guided missiles and drones.

That is so damn cool.

Ace is so right in his essay.

Those who, like Kerry, were for the war and then against it as the going got tough, are really morally reprehensible.

Either a war is morally justified or it is not. If justified, it is worth any cost; if unjustified, it is not worth any cost. There is really no middle ground, where a war is justified only if it incurs a casualty count of less than some chosen number.

People like Kerry hope that people are too ignorant to see through this.

Also, one more sign of success for the Bush strategy: in Spain, when the terrorists wanted to influence an election, they staged an attack in Spain. Now, with the terrorists wanting to influence the US election, where do they stage their attacks? Iraq....and not in the US. That my friends is the definition of success for the Bush doctrine.

I supported the war as a necessary and inevitable venture. I fully expected over 5,000 American dead, with many more injured.

What were people like Sullivan expecting?

- Textbook - They were expecting us to fail in Afghanistan, and see Bush leave office in disgrace like that other "great procrastinator/diplomate" Carter. When that didn't happen the leftist National socialists that infest the Democratic party, the "Commucans" were forced to go to plan "B"....Try to shift the common perception of Iraq to the "Vietnam" model... Time will tell if it will work...I doubt it....They're locked in a time warp of the Kennedy/Johnson/Nixon era. They lost the cold war and they won't accept it....

Well, even though I opposed the war, I'm not going to defend Andrew Sullivan. He had no qualms about accusing people who opposed the war before it began as being part of a "fifth column." Evidently it's only patriotic to criticize the war (or the administration's tax policies) when he's doing it. Otherwise it's treason.

I agree the American public has been naive about what the costs of this war would be, but I also believe President Bush bears at least some responsibility for this. In the lead up to the war, he didn't prepare the American public for the costs of war. He should have made it crystal clear at the time that this was an open ended commitment, that the war could take time, and it would cost treasure and lives, and then gone on to carefully explain why it was worth the sacrifices so that the nation would be behind him even if things turned sour. He didn't do this. I was listening carefully to his speeches at the time, listening for him to do this because I felt at the time it was necessary if we were going to go to war with Iraq, but he didn't. I'm not saying he overtly promised the war would be painless. But if anyone in the public wanted to assume it would be, he did nothing to disabuse them of that notion. The first time I heard him make even a mild effort to prepare the public for the costs of war was the day we invaded; and it was it really to late for it by then. Of course since then there have been plenty of speeches about seeing things through.

So I was annoyed with my fellow Americans when so many of them took umbrage when Bush slunk in and, looking guilty, told us the war would cost an extra, what was it, 86 billion dollars? So many people were upset and Bush's poll numbers temporarily sunk; people got stuck on the figure, as though they'd been unexpected double-charged at a restaurant. But what did they expect? Wars cost money, they typically cost a lot more money than anyone predicts going in, and a war with Iraq always had potential for being far more difficult many assumed. If 86 billion dollars had been the only unexpected cost we faced, it would have been dirt cheap if it allowed us to achieve the goals we had set. So even though I opposed the war going in, I was upset with my fellow Americans' small-mindedness. But I think President Bush bears at least some of the responsibility. Part of the responsiblity of a President is to prepare the public, when necessary, for the costs and sacrifices of war.

I think conservatives really ought to consider this when they are lamenting American's apparent lack of resolve to see things through.

--Rick Taylor

I promised a moonbat pictorial yesterday, but I'm swamped and ran into some minor technical difficulties while working on the post.

LIAR! LIAR! LIAR! CREEPY LIAR!

I can never trust you again.