Following up on the post from VDH's essay, this exchange between David Letterman and Bill O'Reilly a couple of weeks ago sums up the growing feelings of many Americans attitude toward Iraq.

O'Reilly: But they (the public) don't want to hear about the bad world that we live in. It's an evil world that we live in. Let me ask you something. And this is a serious question. Do you want the United Sates to win in Iraq?

Letterman: Well, you know in the beginning, here is my position in the beginning and I, I think I - I sort of felt the way everybody did, we felt like we wanted to do something, because something terrible had been done to us. We did not understand exactly why, all we knew was something terrible, something heinous; something obscene had been done to us. So while it didn't necessarily make sense to go into Iraq as it did perhaps to go into Afghanistan, I like most everybody else felt like yes, we needed to do something. And as the weeks turned into months, years and one death became a dozen deaths and hundred deaths and a thousand deaths - then we began to realize you know what? Maybe we're causing more trouble over there than the whole effort has been worth....What I would like would be uh, for uh, uh Americans to stop dying. And for there to be stability in that part of the world. Now if that means an American victory, ok. But I'm not sure that you can have stability in that part of the world with or without an American presence now, uh, so I would do whatever it would take to stop Americans dying.

The good-hearted, but utterly naïve sentiment of "I would do whatever it would take to stop Americans dying" in Iraq, will continue to chip away at the public's resolve in the coming weeks and months. And absent a credible plan for victory in Iraq - which right now we do not have - the window for the U.S. to prevent a major loss in this battle of the much longer war is rapidly closing.