Seen at Atrios, a link to other big blogger Matthew Yglesias that pretty much gets it spot-on:
Gates seems to be part of the "mainstream" elite consensus which holds that Iraq is almost certainly doomed, but that we should sort of keep on prosecuting the war for years and years just because it would be embarrassing to give up and, hell, who knows maybe a pony will come along. That sort of thing works, I think, if and only if you regard the war as a total abstraction, rather than actual events happening to actual people.
You know, sort of like ring-around-the-collar, except with thousands of US soldiers killed, tens of thousands of US soldiers wounded, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians killed, hundreds of billions of dollars wasted with no end in sight except for the eventual certainty of disastrous failure...but hey, priority one is...ensuring the policy elites in DC avoid embarrassment. Sort of the political equivalent of a breath deodorant.
Well, I'll admit that something sure does stink...
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