Are we really this stupid?

Not that I am a supporter of President Bush or the war in Iraq, but I found it quite surprising when the news headlines yesterday on Yahoo! News claimed "Bush: U.S. to Stay in Iraq Despite Deaths".

Duh...!

After 2 years and 1800+ American troop deaths, and a Presdient who has said from the beginning that we won't let terrorists (ie now insurgents) scare us off, did *any* of us believe that 18 American deaths in two days would somehow change our entire military philosophy and make the President change his mind on the war?

Duh...?

You have got to be kidding me. What an arrogant and misinformed populace we have become. Wars, people, have casualties - usually counted in the thousands. If eighteen troop deaths would somehow change our military position and be cause for us to ever pull out of an engagement, well, Woe-is-us. We might as well cash in the cookies now and sell the farm because we've definitely lost our backbone as a nation.

I'm not saying the war is right - in fact I believe it is quite wrong. And the deaths of any military personnel are a tragedy. But let's get real, if a handful of troop deaths is considered too high a cost when we are in a war (and don't fool yourself - the troops in Iraq are in fact in the middle of a war) then we have truly lost our sense of reality.

Does anyone in America really believe this? Does the reporter who wrote this believe it? Or was it just a stupid attempt at an attention-grabbing headline? Either way, someone somewhere is being an idiot.