Yep, just as the best way to tell how the French were doing in May 1940 would have been to ask a corporal manning the Maginot Line, who would have told you they were going swimmingly -- hardly even seen in Germans. Until that unit got a phone call from Paris telling them the country had surrendered....

Sometimes the guys on the front do indeed have the best picture of how the war is going, sometimes not. No, Iraq isn't like my pithy example above, but neither do happy stories from eager enlisted guys at the front tell the whole story.

I've talked -- as in face to face, not reading a blog entry -- to more active-duty military officers with recent ground combat duty in Iraq than you could shake a stick at. Suffice it to say that what they have told me about Iraq has not caused me to curse the NYT and agree with Tom. But I guess those majors and colonels are just America haters.