You can easily spot a brilliant mind when you see one: "The latest U.S. military offensive in Iraq should be judged not by whether it reduces violence but whether Iraqi leaders pass reconciliation measures, the top U.S. military officer said on Thursday. "If you try to define this in terms of level of violence, you've really put yourself on the wrong metric," Marine Gen. Peter Pace, the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a Pentagon news conference with Defense Secretary Robert Gates."