Does anyone else find this rhetorical flourish insulting:

PALIN: "Your plan is a white flag of surrender in Iraq and that is not what our troops need to hear today, that's for sure."

Bush uses this point, too. It seems to be an unresponded to point in the Republican playbook, and I guess it sells.

But, it presumes that the troops are not adults. If Official Washington were to ever actually admit that Iraq was a mistake, and policing a civil war is a mistake, let's get out, that the troops would be demoralized, perhaps collapsing into a collective fetal position.

To be on the side of the troops is to get them out of a deeply inappropriate situation.

-RC