Think about it.

An officer in the forgotten war...

"I know Iraq grabs a lot of headlines. But there's still a war going on over here," said Lt. Col. Steve Jarrard, 46, of Johnson City, Tenn., based in the hard-bitten southern town of Qalat. "I really hope we're doing the right thing over here."

That's a career military officer in a battle zone, ordering men to kill and risk being killed, and his mission is so poorly defined, so poorly supported and so far from success that he can only hope it's the right thing. Of all the bad news coming out of Afghanistan, that's got to be the worst.

If we can't give our troops a mission with far more certainty and far more support, we shouldn't be sending them into harm's way. Hope be damned, if they can't know, they shouldn't asked to go.

I hate what they're doing to my Army.