The defeatists point us to a wonderful Mark Shields column.

Mark Shields will always be a hero of mine, ever since I was watching some Saturday political show, maybe Capitol Gang, or some such nonsense, and he put the smack-down on Novak.

Novak had apparently made some reference to Reagan as being the "greatest president since FDR" or some silly nonsense as usually comes from between his yellow-stained, corpse-chewing teeth, and Shields' response (from my memory, be forgiving) was along the lines of, "I can't believe you just mentioned FDR and Reagan in the same sentence, shut up Novak."

I have loved him ever since. There is some bullshit you just shouldn't stay calm about. Anyway, this current article makes a good point. We don't have a whole lot of patriotic families in the leadership of this country. The British royal family, whatever their flaws, serve their country, almost universally, in war and in peace. Our leaders children? Nothing. Joe Biden I think has a son in Iraq. The Bush twins are noticeably absent from any war time service. Compare that to the Brits.

During World War II, young Princess Elizabeth, then the heir to the British throne, overcame her father -- the king's -- objections and joined the military, where she was trained as a driver and was photographed personally changing the tire on a truck. Her son, Prince Charles, served as a pilot for five years in the Royal Navy. Charles' brother Prince Andrew saw combat as a helicopter pilot in the Falklands War and made the military his career. The third brother, Prince Edward, was a second lieutenant in the British Marines.

So young Prince Harry, son of Charles and the late Princess Diane, was following family tradition when he volunteered for the grueling training at Sandhurst Military Academy, before being commissioned the equivalent of a second lieutenant. But now Harry, the Queen's grandson and third in line to the throne, has publicly insisted that he join his fellow soldiers when they are sent to Iraq.

Here is what the young prince said: "There's no way I'm going to put myself through Sandhurst and then sit on my (ass) back home while my boys are out fighting for their country." He added, "That may sound very patriotic, but it's true."

Shields then makes the very good point that while soldiers make sacrifices in Iraq, our leadership spends time eliminating inheritance taxes and taxes on dividends and the wealthy, while they expect no real sacrifice from their families or the citizenship at large. We are suffering, in essence, a failure of leadership by example.

Also, am I right that Al Weed, who ran against the soon-to-be-indicted Virgil Goode two years ago, I think has a kid in Iraq who was on this Baghdad ER show on HBO this weekend? Was I imagining that? I know his kid is a doc (UVa grad), and has the same name. I figure there aren't that many Al Weed doctors in this country or in the world, it couldn't have been a coincidence. I don't see anything at his website about his kid being in the documentary, but he should. The show was pretty incredible, everyone with HBO should make an effort to watch (unless you are really upset by amputated limbs).