There was an old National Lampoon letter "written" by Rick Schroeder (you know.. child star Ricky Schroeder who grew up and changed his name to be more adult).

The letter went something like this:

"Dear National Lampoon,

You know what I love? A woman with spunk.

Especially when it's all over her face.

Love,

Rick "I'm not that pussy Ricky anymore" Schroder. "

I think from now on I'm going to substitute spunky for sassy when talking about these Islamofascist nutjobs.

Just seems a little more appropriate.

I actually remember that letter, dude.

John Howard made that point pretty sharply today at his press conference with PM Blair. I was pleasantly surprised.

But then, of course, he went ahead with the usual "Islam is peace" nonsense.

Uh, the same point the Anchoress is making, not the Lampoon letter...

Unfortunately, Anchoress knows little about the competent prosecution or war; but that's not her fault. The leadership she worships are masters at deception.

This Republican administration was incompetent from start to finish on the Iraq issue (actually it is far from finished). They over-hype their small successes, and ignoring the massive strategic blunders that have been made.

Dubya and his boys ignored the military professioinals (they ignore all experts, because to them there is only one purpose to anything; political manipulation). Here's an example.

Gen. Anthony Zinni Commander in chief of the United States Central Command, 1997-2000

"The first phase of the war in Iraq, the conventional phase, the major combat phase, was brilliantly done. Tommy Franks' approach to methodically move up and attack quickly probably saved a great humanitarian disaster. But the military was unprepared for the aftermath. Rumsfeld and others thought we would be greeted with roses and flowers."

"When I was commander of CENTCOM, we had a plan for an invasion of Iraq, and it had specific numbers in it. We wanted to go in there with 350,000 to 380,000 troops. You didn't need that many people to defeat the Republican Guard, but you needed them for the aftermath. We knew that we would find ourselves in a situation where we had completely uprooted an authoritarian government and would need to freeze the situation: retain control, retain order, provide security, seal the borders to keep terrorists from coming in."

"When I left in 2000, General Franks took over. Franks was my ground-component commander, so he was well aware of the plan. He had participated in it; those were the numbers he wanted. So what happened between him and Rumsfeld and why those numbers got altered, I don't know, because when we went in we used only 140,000 troops, even though General Eric Shinseki, the army commander, asked for the original number."

"Did we have to do this? I saw the intelligence right up to the day of the war, and I did not see any imminent threat there. If anything, Saddam was coming apart. The sanctions were working. The containment was working. He had a hollow military, as we saw. If he had weapons of mass destruction, it was leftover stuff -- artillery shells and rocket rounds. He didn't have the delivery systems. We controlled the skies and seaports. We bombed him at will. All of this happened under U.N. authority. I mean, we had him by the throat. But the president was being convinced by the neocons that down the road we would regret not taking him out."

And the war in iraq has accomplished what with respect to the war on terror against the real perpetrators of 9/11?

Well, Spain.. London.. here's more:

Lt. Gen. Claudia Kennedy Army Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, 1997-2000

"From the beginning, i was asked which side I took, Shinseki's or Rumsfeld's. And I said Shinseki. I mean, Rumsfeld proudly announced that he had told General Franks to fight this war with different tactics in which they would bypass enemy strongholds and enemy resistance and keep on moving. But it was shocking to me that the secretary of defense would tell the Army how to fight. He doesn't know how to fight; he has no business telling them. It's completely within civilian authority to tell you where to fight, what our major objective is, but it is absolutely no one's business but uniformed military to tell you how to do the job. To me, it was astonishing that Rumsfeld would presume to tell four-star generals, in the Army thirty-five years, how to do their jobs."

The Republicans are chickenhawks and militarily inept. The best thing we can do for the troops is get rid of every last one of them and start over.

Wow, anonymous, that long post of yours was certainly....spunky.

"The best thing we can do for the troops is get rid of every last one of them and start over."

You want to get rid of all of our troops? So your goals and the terrorists goals are the same?

It's interesting that he didn't actually address the Anchoress's point. Or Howard's. Or, for that matter, see fit to mention that General Kennedy has had political aspirations for some time, and advised John Kerry in the 2004 campaign.

Oh, I meant get rid of the Republicans. The troops are just fine. They just deserve better leadership, that's all.

Yeah, I guess Zinni is a Democratic aspirant (who knows, he might be now).

Here's another:

Adm. William Crowe Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1985-89

"We screwed up. We were intent on a quick victory with smaller forces, and we felt if we had a military victory everything else would fall in place. We would be viewed not as occupiers but as victors. We would draw down to 30,000 people within the first sixty days.

All of this was sheer nonsense.They thought that once Iraq fell we'd have a similar effect throughout the Middle East and terrorism would evaporate, blah, blah, blah. All of these were terrible assumptions. A State Department study advising otherwise was sent to Rumsfeld, but he threw it in the wastebasket. He overrode the military and was just plain stubborn on numbers. Finally the military said OK, and they totally underestimated the impact the desert had on our equipment and the kind of troops we would need for peacekeeping. They ignored Shinseki. The Marines were advising the same way. But the military can only go so far. Once the civilian leadership decides otherwise, the military is obliged.

There is not a very good answer for what to do next. "