From The Anchoress, on a post supporting the retirement of Rumsfeld:

Finally, in reading these very affecting emails from Captain Robert Secher made me feel so terribly bad for his family, and grieve for the loss of his vibrant life (and that’s precisely how Newsweek wanted me to feel a week before the election), but it hasn’t changed my mind that going into Iraq was the right thing to do, indeed Secher, although he was ambivilent about much of the war, believed in the mission, as well. Still, something he wrote in one email in particular stood out to me:

Anytime an American fires a weapon there has to be an investigation into why there was an escalation of force. That wouldn’t have stopped us from firing, but it prevents us from just firing indiscriminately. We have to have positively identified targets.

I read that and I thought…no wonder we cannot get any lasting traction in Iraq. I understand why we are trying to fight a "humane" war, and I know that civilian casualties are tragic, but when I read that line I thought, "if we’d had to fight WWII like that, we’d all be speaking German by now."

We’re falling behind on this war mostly because we’re not fighting it like a war. And no, it is not "like" any other war, and of course we hope to have the fewest civilian casualties possible…but the enemy is not fighting the way we’re fighting, and the way we’re fighting right now? I don’t see how we win if our troops are working with cop-on-the-beat regulations. There is no "humane" war. But maybe the job of war, and of a wartime president, is to clean out the rats nests unequivocally, unambiguously, so that no new rats build new nests, than to hesitate too much.

I’m not a warrior. One of my sons might be. If he is, I want to know that his life will not depend on dithering. There is much I do not understand. But I do know that if you say a thing, and you say you mean it, then you’d better be be ready to back up that "I mean it" department. It’s true in parenting. It’s true in politics. It’s true in everything. And it’s true in war.

Oh, here's the full excerpt of that e-mail, which is kind of interesting.

Anytime an American fires a weapon there has to be an investigation into why there was an escalation of force. That wouldn't have stopped us from firing, but it prevents us from just firing indiscriminately. We have to have positively identified targets. That is why I am now a big fan of having the Iraqis with us. They can fire at whatever the hell they want, we call it the "Iraqi Death Blossom." These guys receive one shot and the whole unit fires at everything in sight until the attached American unit gets them to control their fire. That's fine with me.