I'll trade this interview for all the Columnists at Times Direct and the WaPo

Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis, commanding general of Camp Pendleton's I Marine Expeditionary Force and commander of U.S. Marine Corps Forces Central Command. What it makes plain is that there IS progress in Iraq and that events are turning against Al Qaeda. The tribes in Western Iraq, Anbar Province, are supporting the Iraqi government.

Nobody wants to hear this, least of all the Democrats and the media, but we should keep doing what we're doing and quit jonesing for this to be over. President Bush needs to stand strong and his party together with patriotic Democrats, needs to back him and back away from pork. Somebody needs to take the offensive against our weak-kneed media and start giving our military some credit.

Basically the truth is that we've already won this war and we're mopping up. There are outsiders here trying to capitalize on the power vacuum left when Saddam's regime crumbled. But this "common knowledge" I keep hearing, about how we've made a lot of mistakes and went in without a plan just seems to be a myth built by Bush's critics, many of whom don't know any more than I do about fighting wars.

I remember the riots that took place after Martin Luther King was murdered, as well as those after the first trial of the cops caught on video beating up Rodney King. Our media are showing us Iraq through a soda straw. They don't show us what typical areas look like because they're peaceful. It's only the sites of violence that get reported on. The press should know this and include a caveat with their reports, but they don't seem to understand it themselves anymore. When we see news reports about violence in our own cities, we don't leap to the conclusion that the entire nation is in chaos, because we know better. What we need to remember is that the violence, as bloody and vicious as it is, really sporadic.