now, then rommel launched his famous casserine pass which was a disaster, but frieden jdahl was replaced after that as commander of the second corps. bradley recommended his replacement. eisenhower had been pretty satisfied with him and said positive things about him up until then. and my question, i guess, here is do you think he was just a fall guy? and do you have any other insights? >> guest: well, thanks, harry. i think that friedendahl is the wrong man for the job, and i think he demonstrated that aptly. it took eisenhower a while to recognize that. eisenhower's feeling his way, and when a commander has been sent to him by george marshall, the chief of staff -- who's not only eisenhower's superior, he's ten years older and eisenhower reveres him -- so when the chief of army ground forces send him out as effectively the senior combat leader for the u.s. army, eisenhower is going to take a while to recognize that this guy is not up to snuff. there were suspicions, eisenhower came to share them, that friedendahl may have been a physical coward. i don't know that that's true. i don't t

lee rommel. washington was not a good general. he lost more battles than he won. but he was a winner. he was a winner because of his resilience and the insight he had at the strategic level. i think my time is kind of up. i will end with one somewhat controversial question or statement. when the war in iraq was ratcheting up, i got a call from one of the hotbeds of the l.a. times that said i want you to write an op-ed on what washington would have done about iraq. [laughter] or what he would do about iraq. so i said stephanie, washington wouldn't know where iraq was. [laughter] he wouldn't know about weapons of mass destruction, jihad, whatever. she said that's right. now write the piece. [laughter] so, i wrote this piece in which the main point was washington would have said we are the british and i don't understand that. now if you take the poll among american citizens as to whether the united states is an entire, the overwhelming majority of americans but say no. if you take a poll in the rest of the world, everybody says yes. and we have become an inferior pow