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Mudville, 15 June 2005:
Retention rates for second term and career soldiers are well above normal, in active and Guard/Reserve units (especially those that deployed to Iraq) - people are re-enlisting. Meanwhile recruiting new soldiers is becoming increasingly difficult. But the same explanation can be applied to this observation as to the previous: those with first hand experience in the matter have a decidedly different outlook than those who only know what they read in the papers and see on TV.

Mudville, 24 June 2005

The Senator can be forgiven if, like so many American's, he only knows of Iraq what he reads on the papers or sees on TV.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 26 June, on ABC's This Week with George Stephawhosiswhatsis:

MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: Let's begin with this issue of the anxiety in the American public about the war in Iraq. When you were up on Capitol Hill this week, you heard a lot of senators saying they're worried about public opinion going south or reaching the tipping point. And our latest ABC News poll seems to bear out that anxiety. Let me show you some of the numbers here. It shows that a record-high number of Americans think the Iraq war was not worth fighting, that we're bogged down in Iraq -- 65 percent, and 65 percent believe we have no clear plan for getting out.

Now, I know that you and President Bush believe we have a clear strategy and we're not bogged down, and this was essential to U.S. security. So how do you explain the disconnect between what you see and believe and what the public sees and believes?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Well, I'd say several things. One, war is a tough, difficult, dirty business. And when it's reported, it leaves people with that impression, correctly, that it's a terrible thing. It's everybody's last choice, nobody's first choice.

The second, if one reads history, we know this has been true in the Revolutionary War, we know it was true in the Civil War, we know it was true in World War I and World War II. If all people know is what they see on television or read in the press, the negatives --