Writes Bill Goss:

I caught part of an MSNBC interview of William Cohen by Andrea Mitchell [Mrs. Alan Greenspan] at noon talking about Afghanistan. To the question of soldier suicide Cohen answered part of the problem was that the war was a video game to most Americans. True enough. But the real thing is very stressful. He explained it's like a cat in your back yard: if you explode things all night long, it will be a different cat in the morning.  Hard to say where he came up with the analogy—maybe the DOD did some experiments with cats when he was the Scty. He went on to say that no one likes having to kill young boys and women, but there is the stress of not knowing who is the enemy. The solution to that stress, he said, is to increase the size of the military to eliminate multiple combat assignments. Or to engage more countries in the ongoing fight against terrorism. He predicted that that will happen by December, though he didn't go into detail.

To Mitchell's comment that there was so little widespread involvement in the wars, Cohen's answer was — universal service.  Those who aren't nurses and such for 2 years can be soldiers. Nowhere in the interview was there a question asked about the possibility or desirability of just calling it quits.

UPDATE My suggestion: draft Cohen and Mrs. Greenspan.

UPDATE from Bill Maida:

I saw the interview as well and couldn't get over something Mr. Cohen said. Speaking of the WikiLeaks story, he said that if we had this type of leak during the Civil War, "we might all be speaking now with a Tennessean or Georgia accent."  I don't think I've ever heard a dumber comment from a politician.