Time to get another ribbon magnet...

This story concerns the friendly fire death of Matthew Ziemer, who lasted all of about two hours in Iraq. I had written about the decision to rush the troops into combat without having them complete their full training a month or so back.

The fact some of the brigade's 4,000 soldiers missed that training raises questions about how well the Army is preparing troops for war in the face of accelerated and repeat deployments.

They'll begin to lose the hard core military on this sort of stuff. Frank Rich writes about McCain's charade in the Baghdad market today in the NYT, but he concludes that the stunt may do more to hasten the end of the unecessary war than anything else. Rich says:

It can't be lost on those dwindling die-hards, paricularly those on the 2008 ballot, that if defending the indefensible can reduce even a politician of Mr. McCain's heroic stature to that of Dukakis-in-the-tank, they have nowhere to go but down. They'll cut and run soon enough.

When the final chapter is written, Bush will be alone.