If you haven't read Anton Myrer's "Once an Eagle," you should.

The more I hear from retired Gen. Wesley Clark, the more I'm reminded of Myrer's Courtney Massengale, an social climber who puts his own advancement above his concern for the men he is leading.

Over at Vital Perspective, they have some links to a speech Clark gave last week at the University of Alabama which included these remarks.

There's a lot of demonstrations out there against the American government and its policies. We've made some serious, serious mistakes, the latest being - it's hard to pick the latest - but one of them, recently, was the one where we sided with the Israelis in that air campaign in Lebanon. And instead of stopping the bombing, we were cheerleading it. It hurt Israel, it hurt Lebanon, and it hurt us. It helped Iran.

Yeah, if we've got terrorists lobbing missiles into San Diego from Tijuana, the last thing that the American military should do is send a bunch of those Marines at Miramar 20 miles south and try to take them out.

You can debate whether or not the brief Hezbollah-Israeli war benefited Israel, Iran or Hezbollah, but that's only because the Israelis might not have done enough bombing. There's no doubt who the "winner" would have been had Israel failed to respond, or what the perception in the Middle East would have been toward Israel's ability to defend itself had it sat on its hands.

And this man was a serious contender for president?