MindWar concept, says that in order to be effective the information operative "must know that he speaks the truth, and he must be personally committed to it." (Emphasis Valley's.)

I'll offer a few more suppositions that may apply in the cases of the three generals. We can probably attribute Conway's prevarications, at least partly, to simple-minded singleness of purpose. There's little question that Petraeus is an historic case study in unbridled personal ambition. As to Abizaid, I'd really, really, really love to know at what precise moment in his career the guy took his last drug urinalysis.

It's probably less important to ponder why these men did what they did than it is to consider what to do about them. Here's what Solzhenitsyn had to say about the bad men of his time and place:

In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundation s of justice from beneath new generations… Young people are acquiring the conviction that foul deeds are never punished on earth, that they always bring prosperity.

It is going to be uncomfortable, horrible, to live in such a country!

Solzhenitsyn's words reverberate for me when I think that not only has David Petraeus been rewarded by his promotion to head of Central Command, he personally hand-picked the latest crop of Army one-star generals.

And if McCain loses in November, just you watch who the GOP trots out in 2012.