"Despair is not a method"

Three cheers for General John Abizaid; EU Referendum notices his testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, and his riposte to Senator Clinton's ("hope is not a strategy") sermon:

"I would also say that despair is not a method. And when I come to Washington, I feel despair. When I'm in Iraq with my commanders, when I talk to our soldiers, when I talk to the Iraqi leadership, they are not despairing. They believe that they can move the country toward stability with our help. And I believe that."

I am feeling better--malaise is almost always the outcome of spending too much time paying attention to the nonsense in the mass media, as I was doing just before and after the general elections--about Mr Bush than I did immediately after Mr Rumsfeld's unwelcome announcement.