"All belief is wishful thinking"

True.  Doesn't matter what you'd like to believe when you are a commander and most of all when you are commander-in-chief.  You are responsible for the reality you are leading others into. 

Commanders in Iraq and their commanders at home have no right to lie -- even to themselves --when lives are at stake.  Politics don't belong in combat or in mess halls.

In the dining hall of a U.S. Army post south of Baghdad, President Bush was on the wide-screen TV, giving a speech about the war in Iraq. The soldiers didn't look up from their chicken and mashed potatoes.

As military and political leaders prepare to deliver a progress report on the conflict to Congress next month, many soldiers are increasingly disdainful of the happy talk that they say commanders on the ground and White House officials are using in their discussions about the war.

And they're becoming vocal about their frustration over longer deployments and a taxing mission that keeps many living in dangerous and uncomfortably austere conditions. Some say two wars are being fought here: the one the enlisted men see, and the one that senior officers and politicians want the world to see.

Depression and suicide are increasingly common. 

Sometimes the signs are to be found even in latrines. In the stalls at Baghdad's Camp Liberty, someone had posted Army help cards listing "nine signs of suicide." On one card, seven of the boxes had been checked.

"This occupation, this money pit, this smorgasbord of superfluous aggression is getting more hopeless and dismal by the second," a soldier in Diyala province, north of Baghdad, wrote in an Aug. 7 post on his blog, www.armyofdude.blogspot.com.

"The only person I know who believed Iraq was improving was killed by a sniper in May," the blogger, identified only as Alex from Frisco, Texas, said in a separate e-mail.

Update:  An interesting program is coming up which may illuminate some of the darker corners of military service in Iraq.  "Many junior officers now have more combat experience than those they must take orders from, causing a lack of confidence in the military chain of command. Monday, on To the Point, are senior officers out of touch with modern combat's realities and the war on terror? Does the promotional structure need reform?"