The sound bite presidential campaign of Barack Obama -- working to transform itself into the sound bite presidency of Barack Obama -- delivers a puzzling judgment on the Iraq war. It is that the war, to quote Obama, has "made the American people less safe."

We heard it again during the rhetorical run-up to Gen. David Petraeus' latest debriefing to Congress concerning the war and will certainly hear it for a while longer. This, despite the lack of intellectual underpinning for the assertion. In other words, huh? "Less safe" how? More exposed -- or something -- to World Trade Center-style terror?

Policy by sound bite, inevitable as it may seem in the Internet Age, has its drawbacks, one of those being the potential to cloud the general grasp of reality. A little nuance might not come amiss in assessments of our present Iraq policy.

No Obama speech ever reckons with the complexity if what, I dare say, any of us would categorize as the Iraq mess. No, it's always: "I was against it," "we got tricked," "let's get out." And we're "less safe." Yes -- you think about it that way all the time, don't you?

To the war's defenders -- I don't mean apologists, I mean defenders of a proposition many hope still to make semi-successful -- goes the task of introducing nuance and complexity into the discussion; admitting, yes, it's still god-awfully tough right now (despite the surge), while adding, if not in so many words, quitters never win.

The peril of quitting is the topic hardly any Democrat -- certainly not Obama -- wants to bring up. To bring it up would be to admit to complexity. There would be pain as well as gain from withdrawal. You never hear it from the Democrats. You hear instead the "less safe" mantra, amid self-bestowed back pats for having doubted or opposed the war from the start.

In fact, John McCain is right -- if you prefer, conceivably right -- in what he told the Veterans of Foreign Wars: "Terrible consequences" would follow the abandonment of "our responsibilities in Iraq." Continued...