Mark Shields gave a really poor performance tonight on The Newshour starting by repeating a rumor that the administration is already drawing up plans for the invasion of Syria. Not that I would mind it if it were true, but it's pretty sleazy journalism. Then, when the subject of the criticisms of Rumsfeld came up, he became a lion, full of indignation over the scurrilous criticisms by conservatives of Bill Clinton's defense policies. Huh?

David Brooks, who generally is kind of sheepish, stood his ground, as he asserted that the officers in the Pentagon were using the media's desire to pull defeat from the jaws of victory by leaking all kinds of criticism of the war plan, motivated more by resentment over Rumsfelds transformation of the whole defense department, which emphasizes mobility and precision bombs and missiles over the kind of heavy ground armies which had been the core of our war doctrine for contronting the Soviets. It's all inside inside baseball to civilians like me, who think that 150,000 troops looks like a pretty big army. Especially when the Turks had forced a major part of them to be delayed getting to the theater of war. It set off the press like New York pigeons on bread crumbs, but everybody else wondered what they were talking about. When we figured it out, it just looked like petty insubordination and sour grapes from old Army colonels.Shields got his righteous indignation up and running after a minute or two, but he looked pretty pathetic and a little incoherent, saying something about General Myers lashing out at such criticism being shameful.To me, it's the officers who comment on conditions of anonymity who are shameful. Apparently the big knock on Rumsfeld is that he is seen as arrogant and unwilling to consider the opinions of the officers, but I am not impressed by that excuse, having been raised on images of John Wayne as Sergeant Stryker, you know the gruff leader hated by his men, until they learn how deeply he cares in the end. Who wants sensitive, handholding leaders in of our military? Or leaders who can't salute and go to work because they weren't treated with enough respect by civilian authorities? Isn't that what cost McArthur his job?

All in all, it's been a tough week for the anti-war folks. It won't necessarily continue that way, though. It all depends on whether the Saddamites are really as flimsy as they seem, or if they're setting us up for a huge WMD counterstrike.