gates says u.s. not winning war in iraq. no american politician can resist the lure of the sheer banality, the insane tautology, or the tough admission of what is so breathtakingly obvious that nobody could possibly deny it. this allows these fucks to keep yapping while not incurring the risk of saying something, with which someone might then quibble. what irritates me is that people keep writing stories about what they said, as if they were thinking or drawing important conclusions, or formulating policies rather than merely flapping their flaccid gums.