A General Cries.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- It's an odd thing to see a general cry. But that was what, suddenly, he appeared to be doing.

I had been invited to lunch with Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, commanding general of what is known as Multi-National Division -- Center.

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Now, however, he dropped to one knee. He took from a Velcro pocket on his left shoulder a fistful of white laminated plastic cards. There were faces on them and brief typed biographical notes.

He fanned them on the ground.

They were the soldiers who had died in Iraq under his command.

"I will carry these forever," he said.

He looked down at the cards. They run into the dozens.

"Jay was 22. ... Eddie was 21. ... David was less than 20." He dwells on each face. His voice coarsens and he stops. A red flush burns into the roots of his hair. He keeps his head down.

"Every day," he continues after a while, "I ask myself what I could have done to save them."

His answer, when the conversation continues, is to look at the methods by which U.S. troops are being killed. The increasingly deadly projectile bombs being buried for his patrols create -- as he called them -- catastrophic kills.

"I'm looking out for what's 'left of the boom,' " he said -- what comes before the explosion. "Who's supplying the munitions, who's financing it, who's doing the transport, the training."

It's a thinking war.

"People have said managing Iraq is like playing three-dimensional chess in the dark," he says. "I think that's an understatement. I have never seen a more complex environment."

It's a complex environment that includes attacks like the one Saturday near Mahmoudiya.

At least five more laminated cards for the general's pocket. And doubtless, for he struck me as a good man, more anguished questions of himself, more tears to add to the tears of others.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/05/12/general.iraq/index.html

How awful that so many career military people are being destroyed in this stupid useless war. Thanks for the reminder that it's not just the "grunts" on the ground - it's the generals too.

I think in our fervor against the way Bush is using our military we forget that soldiers, regardless of rank, are most often there because they feel driven to serve this country and have little to no choice on where or how they serve.

"they'll" follow us home" thing...

The whole military is being abused because American civilians can't rein in the civilian "leadership".

The averages have probably gotten worse. Approximately 2.3 US soldiers die each day. Roughly 63 die per month. By the time the "deciders" in Washington grok fullness in September, American parents, brothers, sisters, husbands, wives and children will have lost nearly 200 of their loved ones to a war we shouldn't have started in the first place.

General Petraeus says he will make a decision on the War by September. In the meantime, 200 will die.

When September has come and gone, they'll be giving us another date to wait for.

office, which was the plan all along.

got us into it, and Pride and Stupidity and Fear Feeding keep us there. Not much thought involved at all.