Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, is an odd place to discover the possible fate of Iraq. But the fort, a 90-year-old Army base in the midst of suburbia, plays host to the Army's communications command, which has quite a lot invested in that country's future. For the moment, the United States has 140,000 troops stationed in Iraq, where they shall remain, according to the Bush administration, until the Iraqi government can defend itself against internal subversion and mounting sectarian conflict. Having invested the lives of 2,700 troops, the health of another 20,000, and about half a trillion dollars in that effort, nobody in the United States government is willing to predict when that day will arrive.

It took all of two days for Joe Lieberman to jettison the high-minded justifications for his post-primary campaign against Democratic Senate nominee Ned Lamont. While in his concession speech on Tuesday, Lieberman repeatedly blamed the "politics of partisan polarization" for his stunning loss to an unknown challenger, he pivoted on Thursday to touting what is actually the central rationale of his candidacy: that he, and he alone, is strong on defense. Too many people, Lieberman fretted in Waterbury, "don't appreciate the seriousness of the threat to American security" posed by jihadist terrorism.