No kidding. That was completely unintelligible. I found a clearer explanation on a Baltimore Sun blog: "The more we succeed, the more troops we can bring home from Iraq. The president calls this policy, 'Return on Success.'"

However, I find this new policy name gross and out of touch. Return on Success?

Like returns on the stock market? The currently volatile stock market? Where the nation's richest people and biggest corporations get even richer? An index that has little to do with the immediate concerns of the working poor and much of the middle class?

Way to go. Let's reduce the lives and futures of U.S. troops to the abstractions of electronic money.

is from the money they saved trying to fight this war on the cheap.

No need to include the Iraq War costs in the standard budget. We can keep it off the books by just doing constant "supplemental funding" bills.

We can save money by not manufacturing MRAP armored vehicles. No matter that 1,500 (or 40%) of the 3,776 U.S. dead in Iraq died from IEDs. Or that the highest IED fatality months have occurred since "The Surge" began. March 2007: 54 IED fatalities. 65 in April. 88 in May. 70 in June. 45 in July.

And no need to reinstate the draft or enlarge the army. We can just extend tours to 15 months and overuse the Reserve and the Guard. 700 (or 20%) of the U.S. casualties are Reserve or Guard. Like National Guard volunteer Spc. Brandon Stout (who was killed by an IED earlier this year). You know, the specialist Bush exploited in his message last night.

Bush's speech last night was a revolting pack of lies that offered no "New Way Forward." Even Chris Matthews was prompted to ask "Is this news?"

-

Statistics from icasualties.org

Thank you, Robert Franklin. You make an excellent point.

Meanwhile, the logic of waiting until after a passenger has checked their luggage and passed all stores to tell them their clothing is unacceptable escapes me.

Is it weird being this liked?

Maybe Kilmeade has a lisp and what he really said was, "Is it weird being disliked?"*

Look, the guy's a co-host on Fox & Friends. I certainly wouldn't mistake him for a real journalist. Check out his scrapbook on his website: http://www.briankilmeade.com/Bscrapbook1.htm

It's almost entirely pictures of him with athletes and celebrities, including a cozy pic with Paula Abdul. Somewhere near the bottom are a couple of pics of Kilmeade with political and military figures. Kilmeade is a fluffy, FNC hack. Which is fine so long as no one mistakes him for a reporter of substance.

-

*SarabethG beat me to it.

Eating at Applebee's is the problem.

But really, some lactivists (like the extremes of any activist group) go too far to provoke and draw attention. It doesn't mean the cause they're advocating is wrong.

And to anyone who thinks urinating and breastfeeding (which is a form of eating) are comparable acts, remind me never to have dinner at your house.

Invoking his name? Jesus Christ, Petraeus isn't, well, Jesus Christ.

And yeah, lrsigman, you have it about right.

"Generals are asked to be accountable to the people." Unlike presidents. Watch as Bush none-too-slyly hands the Iraq ball off to Petraeus.

And the Press Corps is just tearing into Perino. For the Bush Administration's sake, Perino better toughen up fast.

It's not like "ordinary life" in Iraq pre-2003 was Disneyland.

Before the U.S.-led invasion, Iraq was divided along ethnic and sectarian lines. Under U.S. sanctions, ordinary Iraqis were suffering. The dominant religious/ethnic group (then Sunni) was economically, politically, and socially screwing over the religious group not in power (then Shia). And Iraqis were killing each other.

Now, in 2007, all of the above is still true. Only now, Shia gets the chance to screw over Sunni (and with a lot more chaos).

So in that respect, "ordinary life" isn't beginning to return. It never left.

Hoping for a "return to normal" in Iraq is setting the bar pretty low.

An Anonymous poster writes, "Pro-life" my ass. They only do this out of self-righteousness; it has nothing to do with valuing life."

In defense of "pro-lifers," some truly are "pro-life" in the Vatican sense of the word: anti-abortion, anti-death penalty and anti-war. I applaud this principled consistency.

Some "pro-lifers" are merely "anti-abortion." Of these, some believe abortion is the taking of a life and is wrong in all circumstances (see Sam Brownback). It doesn't matter whether this "life" got in the womb through rape or consensual sex. I disagree with his viewpoint mightily but also appreciate the consistency. If you truly believe abortion is murder, it's murder no matter how the fetus got in the womb.

And then there are the wishy-washy anti-abortion folks. People who seem to view babies as the just punishment for being a stupid, immoral slut. But they might quietly accept abortion if the mother was saintly, pure and not "asking for it."

These distinctions matter, because it seems to be that the most vocal abortion protesters, the ones who try to shut down clinics, often aren't "pro-life" at all. A real "pro-lifer" might be persuaded to save and protect lives in other ways. But an "anti-abortionist" is all about obstruction. You won't change their mind. But you can slow them down using evasive measures like the Aurora Planned Parenthood did.

And more power to them.