I am now eating some well deserved crow pie for not adequately reading your entire post. My apologies.

“Where George Bush gets a partial pass is that the rot in America’s intelligence agencies long predates his tenure and the tenure of his father as a past CIA director and president, as well”.

In the eight months that Bush held office prior to the 9/11 attacks, the intelligence community that he pledged to reinvigorate slept the sleep of the complacent, rousing itself only when there were turf battles to be fought.

Hmmm, perhaps it might have something to do with who was in charge of the relevant agencies? Oh yeah, they were Clinton’s boys! Is it really surprising the overall analysis of the terrorism picture didn’t change much?

Are you really trying to lay the blame for 9/11 at the feet of GWB? I would think the record clearly shows that in addition to our current Presidents, blame can be distributed going back to the Carter administration.

Additionally one could make an argument that of all the Clinton appointees that should have been replaced when GWB took office, the ones he actually kept should have been at the top of the list for removal. More evidence of incompetence I suppose. So not only did we get tools like Rumsfeld, we also get Clark and Tenet.

Please climb down off your high horse. Altitude sickness is bad fer ya.

I used the Mosner photograph with due deliberation and after reading about him at length.

I neither state, suggest or otherwise imply that Mosner is anything but a hero –which he of course is. I do not for a moment believe that your attack is anything but a thinly veiled pushback on the contents of my post, and that you are using the photograph as an excuse.

It is regretable that a consequence of the president’s Forever War is what happened to Mosner and thousands of other men and women who have returned home alive but horribly maimed and disfigured.

Note further that I put up a link to a story and slideshow on Nina Berman’s images at the end of the post.

My intentions — as well as Berman’s — are straightforward.

Note further a fairly recent post on what I believe constitutes a hero.

I googled Sgt. Joseph Mosner and found this article:
http://www.riley.army.mil/newspaper/Archive/031204%20Post.pdf

(scroll to page 4)

I think it’s only fair to let his own words speak for him, rather than using his image to say what others want it to say.

If it was not for Iraq, the left in the U. S. would be screaming to get out of Afghanistan. However, to make themselves look reasonable, the left supports Afghanistan to get more credibility in their desire to get out of Iraq.

Perhaps, but the Powell doctrine doesn’t translate well into insurgencies and occupations. A basis of the Powell doctrine, with it’s roots in Vietnam, is that the US should not fight fight such wars to begin with. It also explains why the military was not, except for specialized units like SF, prepared to fight an insurgent war. The regular Army had dated doctrine, no training, the wrong equipment and mindset for this kind of conflict. Of course, the Army is trying to adjust, but as SECDEF snowflake once opined, “You go to war with the Army you have.”