A Minute and One Half: I never fail to read excellence when Frank Rich writes it in the NYT. Perfect editorial. Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/opinion/27rich.html?hp

When everyone was ruminating and hand wringing as to how a general with McChrystal's savvy could be so stupid as to utter the things he did to a seemingly lowly newspaper like "Rolling Stone" (the ONLY paper which is able to tell it like it is and get the scoops -- economic debacle, the Interior Dept. Gulf leak idiocy or McChrystal interview -- correct) I thought there is a method to McChrystal's madness.

He did it for a reason maybe two, three or more. It surely did gather attention, showed the insanity of this war and PERHAPS just perhaps got McChrystal off the hook for a policy which he KNEW this country nor any other can win in the no-win Afghanistan. He won't be blamed but will be able to do a lot of I told you so's.

My worry is that the attention span of the American public is about a minute and a half. Once McChrystal is gone and Petraeus in, Afghanistan will be forgotten again UNLESS American casualties rise horrifically. (Truly, even one more life after NINE years is too much.)

9/11 should have been met with the force it did when it happened and the ability then to capture the perpetrators like Bin Laden and Mullah Omar when we absolutely could have done so in Tora Bora. We didn't so Bush could begin another insanity called Iraq. How we get ourselves into the WORST of predicaments I will never know. NOW we have two insanities to monitor -- Iraq which is NO paradise, the hot war in Afghanistan and, oh yes, make that three do not forget the nuclear equipped Pakistan. WE ARE STUCK, like the pelicans in the Gulf, we cannot move and the fact that we cannot move seals our own sorry fate.

That is what happens when a country elects INCOMPETENT leaders. The price is heavy in blood and treasure. That is the ONLY thing we DO know. God save us, bless General Petraeus and hope, unlike recently when he fainted during his testimony before Congress, he keeps WELL hydrated!