Well, it at least sounds pretty bad…

BAGHDAD — Staff Sgt. David Safstrom does not regret his previous tours in Iraq, not even a difficult second stint when two comrades were killed while trying to capture insurgents.

“In Mosul, in 2003, it felt like we were making the city a better place,” he said. “There was no sectarian violence, Saddam was gone, we were tracking down the bad guys. It felt awesome.”

But now on his third deployment in Iraq, he is no longer a believer in the mission. The pivotal moment came, he says, this past February when soldiers killed a man setting a roadside bomb. When they searched the bomber’s body, they found identification showing him to be a sergeant in the Iraqi Army.

“I thought, ‘What are we doing here? Why are we still here?’ ” said Sergeant Safstrom, a member of Delta Company of the First Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry, 82nd Airborne Division. “We’re helping guys that are trying to kill us. We help them in the day. They turn around at night and try to kill us.”

His views are echoed by most of his fellow soldiers in Delta Company, renowned for its aggressiveness.

A small minority of Delta Company soldiers — the younger, more recent enlistees in particular — seem to still wholeheartedly support the war. Others are ambivalent, torn between fear of losing more friends in battle, longing for their families and a desire to complete their mission.

...except, how can you say that “most” of the soldiers in Delta Company share Sgt. Safstrom’s feelings when the Times only interviewed a few of the 83 troops in the unit?

...in interviews with more than a dozen soldiers over a one-week period with this 83-man unit, most said they were disillusioned by repeated deployments, by what they saw as the abysmal performance of Iraqi security forces and by a conflict that they considered a civil war, one they had no ability to stop.

Twelve out of 83.  Or “over” 12.  Whatever that means.  Maybe 13 or 14 or something.  Because goodness knows that they couldn’t just give us an exact number.

But from that we’re supposed to conclude that “most” of Delta company feels disillusioned with the war effort?  Please.

Are there disillusioned soldiers in Iraq?  Sure.  Can we conclude that the disillusionment is widespread from some reporter talking with 12 hand-selected people?  Of course not.  That’s just an example of a liberal reporter trying to advance a political agenda instead of a factual story.

But even if there are disillusioned soldiers in Iraq, we should be asking ourselves why they’re disillusioned.  Is it because of the war itself, or the fact that they aren’t getting any support at all from the media or from Democrat politicians here at home?