With Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Mullen replacing Gen. Peter Pace as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Wall Street Journal noticed an interesting trend among top military officials.

Adm. Mullen, like many of his four-star colleagues on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was skeptical of the decision to send additional U.S. troops into Iraq.

This comes on the heels of Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute's admission that he, too, registered his opposition to the president's surge policy.

And that came on the heels of Defense Secretary Robert Gates expressing his own opposition to the surge.

In other words, Bush will have a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a "war czar," and a Pentagon chief -- arguably the three most important war-related posts in Washington -- who are at least skeptical of the central strategy underlying the president's Iraq policy.

Odd.