After he came back from the lunch break yesterday, Robert Gates amended his comment to Senator Carl Levin that the United States was not winning in Iraq. He assured the Armed Services Committee that while he stood by the original comment, he wanted members to know that the U.S. military had not lost a single battle during the entire conflict.

In 1975, when an American officer told a North Vietnamese officer in Saigon "You know, you never defeated us on the battlefield," his Vietnamese counterpart responded, "That may be so, but it is also irrelevant."