I've been the target as well of Tom's little snaps at the intelligence of people that don't believe exactly as he does. I think in many cases it's more sinister coming from him than the comic putdowns of guys like EB since he's convinced people on here he's got some thread of compassion in him. I keep hoping he's retrievable but at the same time have taken off the gloves and will always punch back at those little slips into the void that he makes. Nice to have an ally in that.

It's amazing that to them, the goal has to be increasing the military committment in our forays and not simply building back our credibility and prestige in the world community. Kerry has always stated the latter as his goal and never promised what the final results would be. Only a fool would do that. Human nature and international diplomacy is simply not a mathematical formula where you can equate the number of meetings or treaties into some solid number of troop committments down the line. Sometimes the goal is simply to have other countries cheering us from the sidelines as it mostly happened for our excursion into Afghanistan. It's still American forces dying for the cause but the other side has a tougher time building resistance if the rest of the world gives them no credibility.