Politicians define military strategies using meaningless sound-bite terms because neither they nor we have the wisdom and education to decide whether a given strategy is a good or bad one. If you asked your mechanic to fix the crumpled fender on your car he would tell you what needed to be done and how much time it would take. Even if you thought his methods didn't make sense and he was taking too long to finish, you wouldn't take your car out of the shop until all the parts were put back together. This is the position the president finds himself in when he gives orders to the joint chiefs, and those men make realistic predictions, even ones that hurt the president's political image. They would have given the same answers to Kerry if he had been elected, but he probably would have ignored them to keep his campaign promise.
Weren't you arguing a few weeks ago that we should be sending more troops to Iraq?
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