View From The Top, 1 October 2008

-- Read the speech from SecDef Gates given Monday at NDU. It's thoughtful, provocative, and has long-term implications. More later, but I'll say right now that I think it's a good speech, and proof enough that Gates should have become SecDef at the beginning of the second GWB term.

-- I saw this over at A Soldier's Perspective, so I can't take credit for finding it, but I'll be darned if I'm not going to do my best to pass this video along:

Every time you get down about America and its prospects, take comfort in the knowledge that our country is defended by men like Lt.Gen Hal Moore. If he thinks this land is worth fighting and dying for, it must be a truly great land.

-- This will be the last time I simply post a link to Michael Yon's site, because if you aren't checking on that site daily, I hate to tell you, you just don't care about GWoT. Hyperbolic? Nope. He is the truth when it comes to daily perspective and the truth when it comes to the most intimate photographs. And when he says, as he did in the past week:

I get the foreboding sense the AfPak war might become far worse than Iraq ever was. Everything here feels wrong.

You bet your sweet bippie that he means it and that it's the truth.

-- I know I'm late to the party on this one, but when I read this story, the only thing that came to mind was: I didn't know Elisha Cuthbert was a Muslim!