He was raised in Chicago, an urban war zone - that's almost as good as Governor Palin's qualification of having seen Russia from flying up from Brevig Mission (KT3 to Joe) to view Russia, and having been "commander in chief" of the Alaska National Guard. I won't count Gov. Palin's support of the separatist, America hating AIP as "military" experience.

I don't see any of the four being "qualified" form a military standpoint, since none of them have held high ranking general officer positions in the services. Since the CiC is primarily a political leader of the military, a strong mix of military leadership and political experience in international affairs would be the ideal CV from my perspective.

So, based on that, Colin Powell would be the only "qualified" candidate for CiC. I have been highly aware of his absence in this campaign as a supporter of either party, as is also the case with Norman Schwartzkopf. My personal and unverified opinion is that Powell was handed a plateful of fertilizer to take before the UN. Being the quintessential good soldier, he will not speak out against his former CiC or policies, but also will not speak out for those.

That's another subject that could bear looking into; the interesting silence of former White house cabinet and advisers, and earlier retired military leaders.

We are settling once again for the lesser of two evils whichever way we vote. I'm reduced to deciding whether to vote for a (Democratic) single party government that will push its agenda on pet issues and sit on the rest of the nation's problems as the Republicans did for six of its eight years as a one party government, or vote to politically split the White house from Congress to gridlock them from doing any more damage.