Also something I read the other day about John McCain struck me as true and full of insight. It may have in fact come from a vet. He said, John's incarceration during the war effectively froze his personal experience of the wider war at the time of its origin. He was not around for Free Fire Zones and the attrition of infantry year after year.

To be sure, he was in his own hell, but his experience of Vietnam begins and ends with a vital 5 years of the nightmare missing from his experience. Perhaps this is why he'll be damned if we don't finish in Iraq without unqualified success.

As for your discussion about America's penchant for war. To quote Chalmers Johnson, who was talking about the armaments industry's margins: "When war becomes this profitable, we're going to see a lot more of them."