Watching Bush wrap himself in the Israeli flag today I kept thinking, these Iraqis and Americans are dieing for Florida's electoral votes!? What's really sick is I hear he can win Florida and still lose if Ohio goes blue. Of all the tableaus Washington has staged to enhance Arab radicalism and Al Qaida recruitment, today's act of blatant obiesance to Ariel Sharon is the topper. How many more innocent people will die specifically as a result of the images staged today for Dade County retirees?

It is almost too excruciating to have the 911 hearings justaposed on the same military industrial network, NBC, with "The Apprentice". On one show, deserving but less competent people are told "You're fired!". On the other, the incompetent are told "You're promoted, and your budgets increased."

Iraq is no Vietnam

Casualty rates of troops garrisoned and protected by armored vehicles in no way equate to exposed troops actually engaging the enemy in combat. Let us take an arbitrary factor of 3 to express this difference. Now take the total number deployed 120,000 versus 500,000, a factor of 4. In the week just passed, 60 American soldiers perished, perhaps 300 were injured. So 60 x 3 x 4 = 720 dead, 3600 injured this week in Vietnam equivalent numbers. An average week at the height of the Vietnam War may have been 150 dead and 500 injured.

Iraq is no Vietnam

Take a hypothetical case. Your enemy succeeds in a spectacular act of destruction. The analogy is: you teach somebody to rape and kill your enemy's wife and daughters; they turn around and rape and kill your wife and daughters. You then:

a) Borrow one quarter trillion dollars, lie to the world, and abuse your friends to attack and capture someone unconnected to the crime.

b) While holding no one accountable, turn your neighborhood into a police state, acting to harm yourself beyond the wildest hopes of your enemy.

c) Are unable to capture the perpetrator, a feeble old man, who continues to mock you with impunity, in two agonizing years, yet you continue to claim the mantel of protector of the neighborhood, and demand re-election to that position.

d) Hold someone accountable, take responsibility, and capture the most visible criminal in the history of mankind with the largest police force in the history of mankind.

Well, that was a tough one!