So, if I'm reading this correctly, Kagan is saying it is the troops' fault that Iraq hasn't been won yet, right? If they would just stop goofing around over there and get the job done, they could return home to their cushy lives stateside.

Remind me again which side of this debate doesn't support the troops?

Glenn, once again you have deplorably elected to take the low road by publishing photos of our screechiest chickenhawks. This practice is misleading, even deceptive.

What the published photos don't show is that before the illegal, aggressive, and imperialist invasion and occupation of Iraq, each Kagan was triple-chinned. It is incontrovertible evidence of their personal suffering and sacrifice that the Kagan jawline has shrunk to mere double chins-- excluding jowls, of course-- in their relentless efforts to urge that the US government and military remain a juggernaut of senseless and illicit slaughter until the rest of the world is subjugated to the Amerikan Hegemony. Forever, if that's what it takes.

Indeed, the chickenhawks must remain secure in remote and well-feathered eyries to be able to perform their valuable, even critical, service. There are an endless supply of grunts to kill and be killed, but the Kagans and their cohort possess a special character and intellect that must be preserved, even cherished, to keep the national purpose coherent and meaningful. They are, in effect, our proud nation's Neocon Chickenhawk Laureates.

Yes, the scars borne by Clan Kagan in their collective selfless pursuit of a New World Order may be airbrushed and photoshopped out of their photos, but would forever score and scab their hearts, if they had them.

Why do neocons all look as though they hide in the bushes near school yards to sniff children’s bicycle seats?

-- Kevinsf

Indeed!

And why do all of them have faces that, as someone once said of Tom Cruise, are "supremely punchable?"

In the Civil War, it was possible to get out of the draft by paying someone else, for free. If I could have a wish granted, it would be that Webb's bill would allow returing Iraq and Afghanistan vets to choose a neocon chickenhawk to serve in their place for the duration, until victory is achieved.

For free of course. Unless we make the deploying neocon pay the returning soldier for what they've been through.

It really really delves into the depths of self-parody when any supposedly "serious" commentator can pen a nonsensical statement like;

("this amendment would actually require the Army and Marine Corps staffs to keep track of how long every individual servicemember had spent in either Iraq or Afghanistan, how long they had been at home, how long the unit that they were now in had spent deployed, and how long it had been home").

And expect it to be taken as a serious argument. Jeez, I'm a lifelong civilian with next-to-no familiarity with the military, and even I know that keeping track of this sort of data is something the military does as a matter of basic administration: and have done since the days when deployment details were recorded with quill pens.

Again: the opinions of these clowns are given weight, WHY?

Bush says he listens to the Boots on the Ground. I guess those Boots are penny-loafers and the Ground is a berber-carpeted Townhome in some suburb somewhere.

To the Kagan's of the world, soldiers are really nothing more than game pieces in their Global Game of Risk. Soldiers die in war, they say, because that is what soldiers are supposed to do: die in war. They die in the wars they proposed and planned and pushed yet never partake. Penny-loafers are not meant for blood and bits of brain and body parts; they are for accelerating the gas-pedal of their German-made sedan as they rush to make their Oh-So Important Dinner Date with other Masters of the Universe.

These Great Thinkers swirl around in each others cocktail parties regaling each other with mutual Slaps to the Back and how intelligent they are as they sip on a chardonnay and browse through the Robb report as they imagine themselves as the Great Warriors here to fianlly save America.

I think if you were to just threaten one of these Great Warriors with serving anywhere near a military zone that their bowels would purge uncontrollably and their weak knees would turn to jelly until they collapsed into a heap of their own, putrid waste.

Glenn, you rock as always. Thank God you are on the Good Guys' side.

for bravely enduring bedsores on their asses, during a crucial operation to secure "more dead troops."

I know they all read Salon because they infect the comments. No defense of the indefensible? Or are they all making Cheeto runs?

The point of this article is well made. Further, I agree the Webb amendment has to potential to effectively reign in the expansion of our Mideastern military aggression.

However, Jim Webb relinquished any claim to hero status--war or otherwise--when he voted in favor of the recent FISA legislation. Simply put, he broke his oath to defend the Constitution. This more than negates anything he accomplished as a Marine. The man has seriously compromised his honor.

Using his status as a "war hero", when it is helpful to one's argument, is as wrong as was the rightwing's attempted apotheosis of David Petraeus.

The upper middle class, the wealthy, and the Jews all served in large numbers during World War 2.

But none of these groups are on the front lines in any significant numbers nowadays even though they are the ones who started the war, still support it, and profit from it in many instances.

Instead of broadly shared sacrifice as was the case during World War 2, the last few years have witnessed an epidemic of tax cuts for the rich, corruption, and profiteering unprecedented in US history, while lower middle class soldiers bleed, die, and get ripped off in a thousand ways.

Not to mention the terrible disaster that has befallen the Iraq people because of these vicious warmongers.

This is going to end VERY BADLY for all concerned if continues much longer IMHO.