my heinous lies that got us there in the first place.

War criminal and bastard for life, the shrub.

And the context is twofold at this point: Vietnam and IS/Iraq.

One conclusion from Vietnam is that you can't win through just air power. Control the skies, fine; that doesn't give you control over the ground. At best you can temporarily deny the enemy control. (Sure, there were others: Don't fight a land war in Asia, for example.)

Then last year when the bombing of the IS started the reverse was said: It was enough to just bomb the hell out of them. We could defeat them entirely from the air. As towns fell, some thought this conclusion completely justified. They managed to overlook the Arab and Kurdish boots on the ground and acted as though they were sort of an opportunistic infection: After the towns were already clear of IS fighters and firmly under control by Iraq, these government and Kurdish forces moved in, but the boots on the ground had absolutely nothing to do with it.

The only way air power clears a town is when it degrades the forces in it so much that they voluntarily pull back because they know they can't hold the town against a ground assault. Defeat and loss of further materiel and troops is guaranteed in the event of a fight, and a fight is coming, so pull back before that happens.

The rest of the claim Bush is making is probably unnecessary: Those boots don't have to be American. But as long as the Iraqi-worn boots have their toes facing in the wrong direction so IS fighters too-often see just their heels, the IS will hold and even expand its territory.

War is all or nothing. Either fight it with total committment, or don't fight it at all. If you fight a war with less than full committment of the nation, you will lose the war. If you fight a war which has limited objectives, you will lose.

Think about it. War is death and destruction. War is what happens when all else has failed. You don't do that unless you are ready to go all out.

We fight wars which are unpopular at home or, worse, are not even known about at home. We fight wars in which victory is not even defined. We fight war which are constrained to "nondestructive methods" and are limited for "force protection." We hear of what is called a "major battle" in which we are told that "seven people were killed." If that was a "major battle," what happened at Iwo Jima in 1945?

If we are not, as a nation, fully committed to a war and prepared collectively to pay the price of achieving victory, then we should not send one single soldier into harm's way.

since he is the perfect reverse-barometer for military action. Whatever he says, we should do the opposite.

Really, Mr. Bush? You want to go with "Al-Qaeda in Iraq was defeated" for your legacy? History already shows that Al-Qaeda wasn't even in Iraq before you unleashed shock and awe and declared victory 45 days later. Well, history is now showing that 12 years down the line, your strutting performance on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln was the worst job of premature celebration since Leon Lett.

Oh, and you weren't in any kind of "difficult decision" territory: Despite millions of people shouting in your insipid simian face that you were making a costly and lethal mistake, you couldn't wait to send the bombers, the battleships and the brigades into Iraq to kill and die so that you could call yourself a war president (after skipping out on the opportunity to be a war veteran 30 years earlier).

Here's to the land you've torn out the heart of; George W. Bush, find yourself another country to be part of.

Bush is a day late and a dollar short.