School has started up again for me and I'm still re-learning balance and stuff like that, all of which is cutting into my panda monitoring time.

I have tried to cut down on my web surfing at work just because it's conspicuous and have returned to my old ways of copying and pasting stories into email and staring at those as though I am conducting a particularly rigorous bit of analysis. Anyway, Dan Froomkin writes a blog-ish column for the Washington Post and he received a letter from a reader. It's one of those things that takes many of my vague thoughts and condenses them into four succinct points. These all relate to Bush's repeated assertion "The only way the terrorists can win is if we lose our nerve and abandon the mission."

The WaPo reader, named J. Harley McIlrath, asks this:

1. Who are 'the terrorists?' He's talking about Iraq. Are 'the insurgents' also 'the terrorists?' Has Bush ever defined just who 'the terrorists' are?

2. What would constitute a 'win' for the terrorists? What do they want? Do we know? Has Bush ever asked himself what 'the terrorists' want and whether or not it's reasonable? Tactics aside, what do they want? Don't tell me 'they hate freedom.'

3. What constitutes 'losing our nerve?' Is it losing one's nerve to pull resources back from an ineffectual approach and apply them to an approach that is more promising? How many times in WWII did we pull resources off one front to reinforce another?

4. What is 'the mission'. Can we abandon a 'mission' that has never been defined? To quote George Harrison: If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there.