Over the next few weeks the public and congress will be briefed on the situation in Iraq by a number of experts. Among them: Army General David Petraeus (commander of the US forces there - expect to see him on Jimmy Kimmel plugging a book by Christmas), Defense Secretary Robert Gates (appointed by the President so you know Kool-Aid is his beverage of choice), Marine General Peter Pace (the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, appointed by...guess), retired Marine General James L. Jones (with pension and full P.X. privileges), Ryan Crocker, the US Ambassador in Baghdad (still missing the good old days when he was assigned to Pakistan), even CBS journalist Katherine Anne "Katie" Couric (who reports at great personal risk that a street market was thriving), and something called the Government Accountability Office (which turns out isn't a joke but really exists).



Despite all of that expertise, I decided to conduct my own report, the findings I shall share here.



Last weekend I was in the Dallas-Fort Worth airport and encountered a whole group of soldiers returning from Iraq for R&R. They were wearing those green camouflage fatigues that allow them to move about undetected in the forests of the Middle East. Airport security made them all take off their combat boots, which lace almost up to their knees. It's the TSA's little way of saying thank you to our boys. "Dog tags in the bins, fellas."



So as we were all putting our shoes and boots back on I asked them what it was like over there. Answer: "bad!" And then I said, "When do you think you guys will all come home?" Almost in unison they said, "When a Democrat is elected."



What other data, reports, hearings, debates, presentations, photo ops from street fairs do we need?