Lieberman went to Iraq, put on a flak jacket and a helmet that made Michael Dukakis look like Douglas MacArthur, by comparison. Then Joe went shopping for sunglasses in a 'bustling' market. Then he declared that we are making progress.

Then Joe sat down to talk to the troops.

Spc. David Williams, 22, of Boston, Mass., had two note cards in his pocket Wednesday afternoon as he waited for Sen. Joseph Lieberman. Williams serves in the 82nd Airborne Division from Fort Bragg, N.C., the first of the five "surge" brigades to arrive in Iraq, and he was chosen to join the Independent from Connecticut for lunch at a U.S. field base in Baghdad.

The night before, 30 other soldiers crowded around him with questions for the senator.

He wrote them all down. At the top of his note card was the question he got from nearly every one of his fellow soldiers:

"When are we going to get out of here?"

The rest was a laundry list. When would they have upgraded Humvees that could withstand the armor-penetrating weapons that U.S. officials claim are from Iran? When could they have body armor that was better in hot weather?

You get the idea. But check this out.

Next to him, Spc. Will Hedin, 21, of Chester, Conn., thought about what he was going to say. "We're not making any progress," Hedin said, as he recalled a comrade who was shot by a sniper last week. "It just seems like we drive around and wait to get shot at." But as he waited two chairs down from where Lieberman would sit, Hedin said he'd never voice his true feelings to the senator. "I think I'd be a private if I did," he joked. "It's just more troops, more targets."

And the culminating graf.

As Lieberman walked out, he said that congressionally mandated withdrawal would be a "victory for al-Qaida and a victory for Iran."

"They're not Pollyannaish about this," he said referring to the young soldiers he ate lunch with. "They know it's not going to be solved in a day or a month."

It isn't clear whether Williams mentioned the last line on his note card, the one that had a star next to it.

"We don't feel like we're making any progress," it said.

Everyone that visits Iraq and says anything other than it is a hopeless quagmire just comes off looking like a fool. It doesn't help anyone politically. Warhawks should just stop doing it.