Thank you Mark
And I aplaud you for your this statement:
Space advocates should publicly support the broad goals of the plan (return to the Moon and on to Mars) while working behind the scenes to morph it into a good use of taxpayer's money (forget lunar base as starting point for Mars, use Moon only as test base or for research Moon specific).
My biggest fear is that the Mars Camp (of which I am one) would shoot the tires out of this space initiative and instead we would be left with nothing. We shoud morph away best we can, but keep in mind if we can't change things to the way we want them, that we should be satisfied with what we get instead.