No members of my immediate family have served in the armed forces. Indeed, even as you wander back through the branches of my family trees, there is precious little military service. I don't claim any special knowledge of what it is like to be in the military or to have a loved one in the military.

But for the last five years, I have been unnerved by the glibness with which many of our nation's leaders have treated the war in Iraq. I watched No End in Sight last night, and, sickened by the endless parade of smug jokes and offhanded lies, I almost became a believer in the death penalty.

Mostly for Donald Rumsfeld, who has the unfortunate character flaw of being unable to express any emotion other than condescension when speaking to the press. His "I don't do quagmires" bit is still appalling, even though everyone at the press conference was laughing along.

Rumsfeld managed to be Secretary of Defense twice without ever serving in the military. You might think he'd take pains to listen to military leaders given the hole in his resume, but apparently he never did. His arrogance, coupled with the much more austere egotism of Paul Wolfowitz, led to the vast majority of problems we face in Iraq today.

It remains possible (if only barely) to make a cogent argument for starting the war, but there is no defense of its planning and execution. And even when it was obvious that things weren't going as planned, the Prez kept calling any criticism "guesswork" and the creepy Veep and pals hinted at a more sinister anti-Americanism afoot in our fair land.

The current administration put our nation's military into harm's way and then fiddled as their plans burned. Troops were reduced to such humiliations as begging for armor at photo ops. Untrained soldiers committed countless acts of depravity at a number of prisons (not just Abu Ghraib), mostly because their civilian advisors said they should. We're still stuck in a war that makes no sense with very little chance of reasonable success. Adding troops has pacified small parts of the country, but there aren't any more troops to add, and the violence continues apace.

Whenever Americans hear of a military takeover of some foreign government, we tend to shake our heads and ask why those folks couldn't have a little more faith in democracy. Given the common sense expressed by many members of the military during the run-up to and the prosecution of this war, we might be forgiven if we didn't yearn for a little coup of our own.

This sort of thinking is short-sighted, to be sure. But answer this question honestly: What would you have done with the two trillion bucks we will end up spending on this wasted war? You could have sent 10 million people to Harvard on a full ride scholarship--for four years at $50,000 per year. By means of comparison, in October 2006 there were about 14 million undergrads. Assuming most colleges don't charge quite as much as Harvard, it is conceivable that we will have spent more on one war than the total four-year tuition bill for every person in college today.

Education is an investment. War is an unfortunate necessity. Except in this case, because pre-emptive war, if advisable on very rare occasions, is never a necessity. But no matter. The dingbats in charge will, by and large, be leaving the scene soon. But even after the Prez has been given his discharge papers, someone else will be left holding the bag.

I don't claim to have any special knowledge of the military, but this shoddy state of affairs is a disgrace. And it's a shame that we still have to wait more than six month before the clean-up process can begin.

Jon Worley is glad he doesn't have personal knowledge of Donald Rumsfeld's address.