Blogger not sure what the point of Maureen Dowd's latest column is

After four days of preaching a message of love — Gates said it was “a myth” that America likes war and called it the first time in military history that an occupying force was in Afghanistan “on behalf of the Afghans rather than to conquer” — he finally got some back.

“You look very young — you look much older on TV,” Maj. Gen. Turhan Abdul Rahman, the leather-clad Kirkuk provincial director of police, told the manicured Gates.

If Rummy had been dissed by our inglorious glove puppets, he would have blown his top. But the disciplined, analytical, pragmatic, introverted Gates is no Rummy (nor does he call his predecessor). His form of ego is not to show ego.