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I have to wonder if one of these days soon, the schmaltzy but honorable won't start to turn salty. The poem already had a kind of turning quality, loneliness and self-pity mask as heroism. The lonely hero is just about one nuance away from The Fool.
Juan Cole wrote in his blog:
``Rumsfeld basically told this serviceman, "screw you!" Obviously "400 a month" is not going to resolve the problem to which the soldier pointed. And it simply is not true, as Rumsfeld implied, that soldiers in a tank are as much at risk as they are in an un-armored truck or other vehicle. There have been a number of reports of rocket-propelled grenades just bouncing off Abrams tanks. The soldiers know when they are being made fools of...''
CG