It's decisional

By Capt. Fogg

I'm not even going to bother with the dictionary. If Decisional is a word, it shouldn't be, but a Decisional meeting is what Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell called today's "surprise" get together at the Al Asad Air Base in Iraq's Anbar province; bringing together senior U.S. military leaders, top Iraqi political leadership, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and of course, the Decider in full Decisional mode.

Nothing beats the opportunity to look David Petraeus in the eye and Ambassador Crocker and say, 'What's the situation? What do you think?'

said an unnamed "senior official as quoted by ABC News today. I don't agree. I think we'd be better off, decisionally speaking, having the opinion of someone whose career doesn't depend on selling vain hopes and sanguine dreams to delusional deciders.

Whether or not there has been a significant and stable gain in overall security in Iraq of late, and whether the administration is simply sprucing up the stage set or building a full scale Potemkin Village, one can be forgiven a bit of skepticism -- and particularly one old enough to remember General Westmoreland's hauntingly similar vision of a "light at the end of the tunnel" ten weeks before the Tet Offensive.