in one of the most thoughtful vietnam era accounts, general bruce palmer once observed, with respect to vietnam, our leaders should have known the american people would not standstill for a protracted war of indeterminate nature with no foreseeable end to the united states commitment. he further stated in the article, general palmer thereby distilled into a single sentence the lessons of vietnam to embark on an open-ended war was to forfeit public support, thereby courting disaster. the implications were clear. never again. i further read from the article, the dirty little secret to which few in washington will own up is that the united states now faces the prospects of perpetual conflict. we find ourselves in the midst of what the pentagon calls the long war a conflict global in scope, if largely concentrated in the greater middle east, and expected to outlast even general palmer's 25-year war. the present generation of civilians and officers have either forgotten or inverted the lessons of vietnam, embracing open-ended war as an inescapable reality. madam speaker, i ask unanimous c