Let's see which neo-con on this board can be the first to utter the shrill cry that General Anthony Zinni is, at minimum, unpatriotic, and at the worst, a traitor.

The distinguished general tonight said that heads should roll at the Pentagon over the fiasco that is Iraq. He wasn't talking the rightness (or wrongness) of the war itself, but of the incompetence with which it has been waged. He blamed Pentagon planners for not planning well, and for ignoring the military's assessment that the Iraq occupation would take many more troops than Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz thought.

But of course no heads have rolled, and no one expects the no-fault Bush administration ever to admit that anything is in the least wrong. Even when Bush blamed faulty intelligence for telling him that there were WMD in Iraq, no heads rolled.

And tomorrow, Bush will speak (in prime time) to explain our "course" in Iraq, such as it is. I'm sure, being the golden-throated orator that he is, Bush will electrify all of us into a renewed sense of patriotic fervor. Not.

Joe B.