Original sentence: However, some of his opinion pieces in the spring of 2004 suggested that he had tempered somewhat his earlier optimism about the war
Edited sentence: "In peace, Brooks' genial mockery and optimism are delightful.Although he appears in several of his columns to have tempered his initial rosy view of the war's outcome (specifically beginning with those columns published since the spring of 2004), he continues to put forth a generally optimistic view of Iraq.As David Plotz of Slate wrote (in the full article available below):.Brooks, whose national-greatness ethos lent more energy to the war than anything his colleagues have written, will neither embrace the war, nor disown it, nor even look it square in the face.He has also stated that he rejects the findings of several public opinion polls throughout 2005 showing a small majority of Americans would prefer to withdraw our armed forces from Iraq immediately.He hides.In certain columns in the second half of 2005, Brooks has made what some letter-writers regard as strange comments about America's "national psyche" and the damage that would be done to it if the nation were to withdraw from Iraq before achieving "victory".In this regard he has been widely criticized as concentrating on irrelevant minutiae of the war and of Iraq as a country to the exclusion of the far less promising picture of the whole.In wartime, they're a cheat.It can be inferred from these comments that Brooks subscribes to at least a moderate form of military nationalism--that "defeat" in Iraq (signified by a unilateral withdrawl of American forces) would somehow cause harm to American national faculties.Other conservatives confront the ugliness and bloodshed of the occupation and redouble their commitment