Here's the story from my sit-down with the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs last night and his speech to several hundred people in God's Country East last night.

I swear, when the handlers close that door, and you find yourself alone in a small cramped room with the former top military adviser to the President, who presided over the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan...well, it's just one of those moments I guess.

My article could have been better. Let's just say it could have not-sucked. But such is life when you're given an hour to frantically summarize an hour-long speech on paper. And he didn't share a lot of conclusive, definitive ideas, I thought. There were a few interesting insider stories on the War on Terra from the Pentagon, and some funny one-liners. But other than that? Not a lot to work with.

But the 15 minutes I had with him one-on-one was another story. I scrambled to grind through as many issues as possible - it felt like the lightning round on the $100,000 Pyramid. (Scroll down and you'll find that section - you can see how the material suddenly gets more substantive.)

And I had about 20 minutes to throw that interview section together. That's not writing on deadline - that's writing with a fucking gun to your head.

Oh, and of course I put the question to him. You know, The Question: Numbers on unquestioning public support for the war continue to slip. WMDs, a cornerstone of our justification for being there, still haven't been found (and probably never will). What would you say to the American public to explain why we need to be in Iraq?

"Don't worry - I'm going to cover all of that in my speech," was all he would offer. Well okay, I thought. But you know it's funny...he never really got to that. At all. And that, my friends, was ultimately the evening's most interesting detail.