  Via a novel experiment, Liu \emph{et al.} [Phys. Rev. B, {\bf 85}, 205418
(2012)] estimated the graphite binding energy, specifically the cleavage
energy, an important physical property of bulk graphite. We re-examine the data
analysis and note that within the standard Lennard-Jones model employed, there
are difficulties in achieving internal consistency in the reproduction of the
graphite elastic properties. By employing similar models which guarantee
consistency with the elastic constant, we find a wide range of model dependent
binding energy values from the same experimental data. We attribute some of the
difficulty in the determination of the binding energy to: i) limited
theoretical understanding of the van der Waals dispersion of graphite cleavage,
ii) the mis-match between the strong bending stiffness of the graphite-SiO$_2$
cantilever and the weak asymptotic inter-layer forces that are integrated over
to produce the binding energy. We find, however, that the data does support
determination of a maximum inter-layer force that is relatively model
independent. We conclude that the peak force per unit area is $1.1 \pm 0.15$GPa
for cleavage, and occurs at an inter-layer spacing of $0.377\pm 0.013$nm.
