Part of the problem is that the numbers were so flexible. Initially, it was said there were about 200 enemy soldiers, but we had killed half of them. Then it was maybe 400, but we had killed half of them. Then, at one point, maybe there were 700 to 1,000, but we had killed half of them.

So the question is, now that the battle is over, how many enemy soldiers were there in the first place, how many are dead and how many escaped? We don't know. The Defense Department tells us that it is not going to get into the "body count" business. But that's the wrong answer. The war on terrorism is really a search-and-destroy mission; we are not trying to take terrain and hold it. We are there simply to kill or capture the terrorists. Under that circumstance, body count is precisely the business we ought to be in, as it is the only measurement of success. Still another strange aspect of how this war was conveyed to us by the briefers and journalists is this odd fact: Day after day, we were told that U.S. forces were engaged in "heavy" or "fiercely intense" fighting. Yet, except for casualties suffered on the first day, not a single American got a scratch. It is hard to believe that infantry soldiers could be engaged in "fiercely intense" fighting for so many days without suffering a single casualty.

It really is important that before we commit troops to battle, we have a clear definition of success. Otherwise, they are being committed to an indefinite battle for ambiguous purposes. How can they know if they've won or lost? That was precisely what happened in Vietnam. There were no clearly stated objectives, no definition of success, no plans for the endgame and no exit strategy.

President Bush seems in danger of falling into that trap. He's awfully vague about the endgame. Long before we've even dealt with al-Qaida, he seems to be laying the groundwork for an attack against Iraq, despite a complete absence of evidence that the Iraqis have anything at all to do with al-Qaida and Sept. 11. We can defeat Iraq, of course, but the problem will be after that. How can we find a stable government? Iraq, a nation with three main factions, will not be easy to govern, and if we ended up having to occupy it, that would become a nightmare.

That leads me to believe that there was not that much contact between our infantry and the enemy, that what our guys did was simply paint the targets for the air power.

None of this would be important except for the business of credibility. Our troops fought well. Presumably, we killed a lot of the enemy. And, of course, we are grateful for so few casualties. But still, U.S. credibility has been damaged by the conflicting, often contradictory accounts the press was given about what was actually happening.

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A great many members of the so-called Iraqi opposition are communists and intellectuals who won't be worth a damn in the fight or in the aftermath of the fight.

I like President Bush, but I feel he's being fed some bum advice by some of the people around him. This is not a war in defense of freedom. No terrorist organization threatens our freedom. It is simply the pursuit of a group of people who did us harm. If we continue that pursuit until we have hunted them all down and killed them, it would be a good thing. If we get into the business of toppling governments we don't like, it will turn out badly.

We need a diplomatic front. We need to examine our foreign policies and change those that cause people to hate us. Terrorism, after all, is an effect, not a cause. Attacking terrorism without examining the policies that cause it is like treating symptoms without curing the disease. But most of all, we need the naked facts, including the body count.