Is the Pentagon With the Program in Iraq?

The Wall Street Journal's Brendan Miniter is a quick study who writes with a smug certainty. Anything that is okay with President Bush and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld is okay with him. Everybody who disagrees sucks.

But Miniter does make some interesting observations in an op-ed piece that begins:

It's a disgrace that many of our public intellectuals and a disproportionate number of elected officials in one political party have abandoned a war they once supported. But as President Bush embarks on new campaign to shore up support for the war by outlining his strategy for victory in Iraq, he must now conduct his hearts-and-minds campaign in a surprising place: the Pentagon.

There is no indication that the military's top brass is going wobbly on the war. But there is mounting evidence that a large number of individuals inside the Pentagon have not internalized the president's strategy for winning it. That is to say, outside the immediate reach of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and others, much of the military and its civilian appendages still operate as they did during peacetime.