Well... at least they didn’t say we’ve turned the corner in Iraq. We’ve turned so many corners there it’s obvious we’re turning the SAME corners – which means we’re going in circles.

That's always troublesome.

For Gen. Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker, the latest round before Congress must be a comedown from the softball fest in September. Their hemming and hawing seemed to irritate even Republican stalwarts like Lugar, and this time around, their anti-answers were as welcome as a smoldering fart at a perfume counter.

From their testimony, what is amazing is the apparent restructuring of our main enemies in Iraq (there are so many). Now, according to the Pet-Crocker team, those dread foes are Iran, Syria and... whew!... Lebanon's Hezbollah. If we pick up our current events books, lick our thumbs and flip a few pages, we see promptly that these enemies are also - tah-TAH! - Israel's main enemies.

OK. Well... at least we know what track we're on. Although buried in their chronic obfuscation, Petraeus and Crocker indicated where the new thrust is headed: We're going to take out all of Israel's enemies in the Middle East. Simple! That's gotta be great news for our brave little ally, who got seriously - and unexpectedly - bitch-slapped when it tried another Litani River sweep two years ago.

Unfortunately, it isn't great news for the United States. These countries and militias have not presented any threat to this country historically, despite all the fairy tales. There must be a limit to how much blood and treasure we're willing to throw away in adventures that mean nothing to the security of this country, and benefit either domestic economic elites, or foreign countries.