Martin Schram

Viewed through the media's close-up lens, this week's bureaucratic mid-course correction at the Department of Veterans Affairs looked like just another slow-mo replay of a proverbial ocean liner turning, ever so slowly, on the high sea.

But viewed through a contextual big picture prism that has monitored the VA's decades of dysfunction and injustice for those who fight our battles, watching the change happen was like witnessing that same ocean liner flipping up like a teenager's skateboard executing a 180-degree reversal and plopping back into the sea, without even making a splash.

The head-on collision was devastating, midday Monday, at the intersection of California's Interstate 8 and the information highway.

Miraculously, there appeared to be only one fatality -- the mind-bogglingly impervious arrogance and intransigence of the Toyota car family. Yet, frankly, it is far from certain that the victim will have the decency to remain dead.

Once again, an American wartime president discovers he has been painted into a corner of his own Oval Office.

And once again, a president summons his top war-zone general to a one-on-one meeting aboard a presidential plane parked on an overseas airport tarmac -- after the general brought public pressure upon his commander in chief.