News – Look to History Sparingly

Americas

Bush talks up the VFW and likens Iraq to Vietnam. Yup, we pulled out of Vietnam. And they haven’t, in the end, turned out so bad as one might have feared. Thus I don’t think the comparison helps his case any. Bush needs to stop making tenuous examples of the past, which hold little connection to the now and look to the now for arguments to convince the people. Iraq is not Vietnam. It’s something completely differing with different forces and cultures in the mix. Until he focuses on that, he’ll keep screwing up and more people will start to question his credibility.

Senator John Warner makes a key point on out presence in Iraq. While we need to set the country on its feet, we don’t want the leaders of the country to think that the US will be there forever. It fosters the opinion in some that they can just sit on their laurels and waste time. And, quite simply, the US can’t stay there forever at the current level of commitment of forces. It’s doing harm to the military that will take some time to repair, both in terms of manpower, resources and morale.

Is Bush our least possible president? To be honest, there are a lot of poorly considered presidents in history, so competition for the bottom of the barrel is stiff.

A look at the free speech rights of US soldiers.

Middle East

It’s amusing that Iran outlaws ‘western style’ haircuts. It’s the sort of silly prohibition that only makes the outlawed thing more desirable and fosters unrest.

Olmert bans mobile phones from weekly cabinet meetings of Israel’s government in a bid to reduce leaks. Not a bad idea, but if people want to leak, they’ll leak. Mobile or not.

Could US forces expect a ‘mini-Tet’ sort of attack soon? If the various terrorist elements currently in Iraq can coordinate themselves to that level, that means everything our military has done has helped little in quelling them. It would be a painful blow, despite any potential casualties that would occur.

The EU decides to allow oil shipments to Gaza again after cutoffs resulted in days of no power.

Africa

Sudan’s government gets accused of breaking a UN embargo by deploying weapons. Amnesty International makes the claim and Sudan’s government denies, saying the pictures cited as evidence are suspect.

Proof the US isn’t always incompetent when it comes to aiding countries. Just depends who is at the wheel.

Asia/Pacific

South Korea gives more food aid to the North after a rough bout of flooding. I have to hand it to South Korea’s government, they’ve been pretty positive overall when it comes to giving aid to North Korea. All things considered, they could be a lot more tightfisted.

Staff in Australia’s PM office are the latest to be caught, making edits to articles on Wikipedia that pertain to their country. It amuses me how they can’t seem to grasp that making these edits at home on personal computers would be far less suspicious.

A looming issue with China’s ‘one child’ policy. Too many elderly, not so many young folk. The young will have more trouble supporting their elderly relatives because of it.

General

UK scientists find a means of regulating blood pressure through oxidation of the blood.

Experts say that tightly braiding the hair at the scalp can lead to permanent hair loss. So think twice before you go after those cornrows.

Monster.com gets hacked and they come out with the details on just how bad it is.

The Blogs look at Bush’s Vietnam analogy, Google Sky and photos of a shirtless Vladimir Putin.

Today’s Papers have a boiling mob feud in Italy that spilled into Germany in the form of an ambush that involved a pizzeria, machine guns, and six dead, attempts by the US to get US businesses to buy Iraqi products.. only there aren’t many products of that sort to buy, news that the American intelligence community is pessimistic about Iraq and more in the one page news.

Amusements

Say what you will about R Kelly(There’s a lot to say), but Trapped in the Closet is some amusing stuff. I think I can leave the amusements at that for today, since that’s a lot of video to look through, especially if you’ve never seen the series before. If you haven’t, I recommend it.