What's a "heavy roll"? I didn't read your post as disagreement, exactly; I can go along with clarifying that half of Gen. Sanchez's remarks were under- or un-reported. I was thinking in simple terms of the relative newsworthiness of the two halves, but it hadn't occurred to me that omitting the first criticism of the press actually softened the second half. I think you might be right about the calibrating contrast: "no pinko liberal talking here".

The military's tradition of staying out of politics (except for budgets) makes General Sanchez's willingness to speak out all the more vivid. Everything he said communicated genuine and deep concern for the situation the military finds itself in, and the consequences of the country. I can't help but interpret this extraordinary break with tradition as indicative of the gravity of the subject.

One thing we risk missing here on Flame is careful analysis of Sanchez's words. It's striking how he never names names, and thus paints with a broad brush. Hard to argue with that: Nobody in "the civilian leadership" has come out of this mess covered in glory. Not getting personal let him weave a narrative across time that neatly identified the failings: The Congress that failed to exercize "focused oversight" was the Republican Congress; while the Congress that "recognizes that the military cannot achieve victory alone in this war" is the present Democratic Congress that's satisfying nobody. Wicked clever how precisely he points the finger while never identifying the target by name.

It impresses me once again how many fine minds we have in the American military. Sanchez's speech is one example, Petraeus's Counterintelligence manual was another. Browsing deep into Pentagon Web sites (though still public, let me say for the record) below the level of the PR bullshit reveals a layer of professionals at work, and there are lots of examples like this. An offbeat example: Last night I stumbled on the Web site of the Chaplain Corps, and browsed a lot of material that impressed me as sophisticated and crisply competent, as well as considerable philsophizing about what I could call the "zen" of bringing religion to soldiers. (BTW, no sign of the fundamentalist proselytizing that's been reported.) Maybe you'd expect chaplains to be stereotypically more thoughtful, but they're not the only ones I've come across.

Interesting bunch, our military...though I'd note that sometimes I detect a worrying insularity, which I guess is a drawback of a volunteer, professional military.