From Holden:

Another nice contribution from MoDo.

For political reasons, the president has a history of silence on America’s war dead. But he finally mentioned them on Monday because it became politically useful to use them as a rationale for war – now that all the other rationales have gone up in smoke.

“We owe them something,” he told veterans in Salt Lake City (even though his administration tried to shortchange the veterans agency by $1.5 billion). “We will finish the task that they gave their lives for.”

What twisted logic: with no W.M.D., no link to 9/11 and no democracy, now we have to keep killing people and have our kids killed because so many of our kids have been killed already? Talk about a vicious circle: the killing keeps justifying itself.

Just because the final reason the president came up with for invading Iraq – to create a democracy with freedom of religion and minority rights – has been dashed, why stop relaxing? W. is determined to stay the course on bike trails all over the West.

And the best line in her column? It came at the end.

Thomas L. Friedman is on vacation.