In all these conversations, these angry screeds just burst out of these conservatives, without any pre-knowledge that the fellow they're talking with is an editor of a progressive, anti-Bush, pro-democracy website.

When they find out my political slant, they seem overjoyed that they've met someone who shares many, though clearly not all, of their anxieties about the wrong direction in which the country is being taken. They need to vent their anger and disappointment big time; they can't do so in front of many of their military superiors and fellow officers. So they're happy to have someone to talk with who listens to their rants and agrees with much of them.

I'm in Florida for my uncle's 85th birthday celebration in a wealthy, white neighborhood in South Florida and one of the extended-family members, an active-duty official in one of the armed forces, volunteers that "the Cheney Administration," as he puts it, has wrecked the standing of America abroad by its obsessive pre-occupation with launching this ill-advised Iraq war and then continuing it long past the point of no-return.

CONSERVATIVE ANGER AT BUSH

This former Reagan staffer opines that if the U.S. had gone into Iraq with "a half-million men, and taken care of business," America would not be trapped in the quagmire it's in today. But he also believes that you can't fight extremist Muslim terrorists mainly in militarily campaigns since "you can never win" that kind of guerrilla war.

The war we should be fighting and winning, he said during his 30-minute rant, is for the hearts and minds of the locals, and CheneyBush policies are not capable of succeeding in that type of battle, especially given the use of torture as approved state policy, the not uncommon rapes and murders of Iraqi civilians by U.S. troops, the corruption everywhere that accompanies the U.S. occupation, the continuing lack of a functioning infrastructure (electricity, fresh water,) etc. .

Later in the evening, my sister and I engaged the military man again on a seeming contradiction: You stated, we say to him, that the U.S. can't win these type of wars against nationalist guerrillas but you think we should have thrown 500,000 troops into the battle anyway.

In an argument I've heard before from other military types, he didn't see his position as containing a contradiction:

>>"If we had moved that half-million in there in force and kicked ass immediately, stopped the looting, secured the ammo dumps, made it more difficult to come across the porous borders, installed our Iraqi strongman in charge -- if we had done all that then, chances are pretty good that things would have turned out much differently and to our advantage now.

>>"But since the Cheney Administration, mainly Cheney and Rumsfeld, messed up the situation royally from the git-go, there's no way we can put Humpty Dumpty back together again, achieve anything approximating a victory. It's simply time for us to go, before we make the situation even worse. Better to simply get out of there with as much of our tattered reputation as we can take with us, rather than flail about for a year or two before having to exit even more hastily in humiliating Vietnam-War fashion."

DEMOCRATIC MOVES ON THE IRAQ WAR

The latter part of that argument seems to animate many Democrats in the House and Senate, willing to take the political risk by attaching strict conditions to war-funding bills, as a way of crippling CheneyBush's ability to wage its aggressive war-of-choice and to build momentum for ending the U.S. misadventure in Iraq as soon as is practicable. Sure, the Dems' moves are a kind of attack-from-the-side approach, rather than opposing CheneyBush policies frontally, the result of which timidity is to leave U.S. troops on the ground there for several more years.

But if it takes small, incremental but significant steps to start the exit-Iraq ball rolling, then let's take them -- as long as the effort continues with more meaningful de-funding and withdrawal bills in coming months. In addition, it is essential that Congress pass a bill stipulating that there will be no financial support for any pending Bush war against Iran.

Passing resolutions devoid of legal teeth in them doesn't help all that much in getting U.S. troops, and innocent civilians, out of harm's way. Passing bills that fund the troops' withdrawal, in concert with U.N. and regional stabilizing efforts, can draw the day closer when the U.S. military machine can start rolling out of this catastrophic war, now in its fifth tragic year.

ALBERTO GONZALES, BUSH TOADY

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