The worst answer the U.S. can make to such a message--which is precisely what we did in Mogadishu--is back down. By most indications, Aidid's supporters were decimated and demoralized the day after the Battle of Mogadishu. Some, appalled by the indecency of their countrymen, were certain the U.S. would violently respond to such an insult and challenge. They contacted U.N. authorities offering to negotiate, or simply packed their things and fled. These are the ones who miscalculated. Instead the U.S. did nothing, effectively abandoning the field to Aidid and his henchmen. Somalia today remains a nation struggling in anarchy, and the America-haters around the world learned what they thought was a essential truth about the United States: Kill a few Americans and the most powerful nation on Earth will run away. This, in a nutshell, is the strategy of Osama bin Laden.---Opinion Journal

(Glenn: Fallujah (or as Rich calls it, Fye-oo-ha (Spanish)) as Tet?

He goes on:

Reader Chris Stacy observes:

Look at the single column of stars [In the World War II memorial, where each star represents a hundred GIs] closest to you.

That single column of stars represents well over twice the number of American servicemen killed in Iraq in the past year.

That single column of stars represents the number of casualties we suffered roughly every six days -- week in, week out, for almost four years -- during WWII.

At the casualty rate we have suffered in Iraq over the past year, it would take well over 600 years to fill this wall with stars.

In your mind, line 62 of these walls up, end to end (that's somewhere close to a mile long). That's roughly the number of people who live in Texas, New Mexico and Arkansas. That's the number of people that are no longer ruled over by Saddam Hussein.

For the benefit of the esteemed Mr. Blix, that wall could also represent the estimated number of Iraqi citizens that Saddam Hussein put into mass graves in the past 10 or 15 years.

For the benefit of the Hon. Sen. Kennedy from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the great multitude of journalists who cannot seem to free themselves from the grip of a 30 year old delusion -- at the casualty rate we have suffered in Iraq over the past year, it would take almost 90 years to surpass the number of American servicemen killed in the Vietnam conflict.

Glenn adds: "When I see newspapers calling 12 deaths in a day "heavy casualties," I know that this war isn't anywhere close to the scale of past wars -- or of the war we're likely to see in the future if we falter in our efforts now."

Yeah, we were distressed when ABC kept calling the loss of 12 "enormous casualties." If it's one of your loved ones, it's enormous, and one is too many, but in the greater context, it's not so many.

Bowling today was definitely so-so. I'm down to 134 or 133, and it's definitely time for a break.

No caches, and M is at 982! Heh. I'd hold off and let him get that thousand first, except for the upcoming trip to Monterey.