[NCSteve]

I'm somewhat surprised you would decide to poke the Bush/GOP cheerleaders in the eye like this, but I commend you for the article.

There is only one thing wrong with your assertion of what Bush should have said: it would have been hypocritical. It is the political leadership's failure to have the stomach to deal with post-Saddam Iraq effectively that has brought us to this point. For Bush to throw such a harangue on his senior military would have lost him quite a bit of respect and caused them to at least mentally marginalize him as CinC. A speech such as Patton's should have been directed at the likes of Karl Rove, Condoleeza Rice, and most importantly, Colin Powell.

More to the point, Bush himself would do well to take some of Patton's rhetoric to his own heart. We need to either do the job in Iraq, and do it correctly, or get out. Neither Patton nor McArthur would have tolerated the current political climate of this conflict. Neither Patton nor McArthur would have engaged in the public humiliation of apologizing for Abu Ghraib while the scorched corpses of Americans were hung from bridges while cheering crowds of Arabs looked on.

[mississippi red-neck]

It is the political leadership's failure to have the stomach to deal with post-Saddam Iraq effectively that has brought us to this point.
A speech such as Patton's should have been directed at the likes of Karl Rove, Condoleeza Rice, and most importantly, Colin Powell.

Dead on, Steve. Very good.