Screeds Against the Hawks

A lot of the media hand-wringing seems premature to me. Chances are the war will still be short and relatively bloodless (for the US, at least). And I feel uncomfortable predicting gloom-and-doom at this early stage. It seems vaguely unpatriotic.

Still, there is one silver lining to the resent reversals in Iraq: It's making Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Perle look bad. Barry McCaffrey is accusing Rumsfeld of starting the war with "inadequate forces". One Pentagon official concurs:

"This is the ground war that was not going to happen in (Rumsfeld's) plan," said a Pentagon official. Because the Pentagon didn't commit overwhelming force, "now we have three divisions strung out over 300-plus miles and the follow-on division, our reserve, is probably three weeks away from landing."

Even those who think the war is going well are taking pot-shots at the neocons: '"It's only not going as quickly as Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other so-called experts thought, but it hasn't even been a week," an irritated Pentagon officer said.'

These are the most dangerous people in the administration, they guys who think we should invade Iran and North Korea, the bigmouths who undermined our diplomatic efforts from Day 1. As far as I'm concerned, they deserve whatever's coming to them.

Spitting in Their Beer

Oh, goody. Now the Canadians are getting a dressing down from US Embassador (and former Republican governor of Massachusetts) Paul Cellucci. It'll get little play here, but the Canadians will be spitting in their beer over this, and to what end? These public displays of self-pity do America much harm and little good.

How to Tell if You're...

I see that zompist.com has just posted How to Tell if You're a Mexican. This is a running series on the site; Frenchmen, Turks, Indians, Brazilians and others have contributed, too. If you haven't read them, do yourself a favor and check out the full list here.

Europeans Boycotting US Products

"This started as a light-hearted reaction to Americans dumping French wine in the gutter and renaming 'French Fries' as 'Freedom Fries'," a restauranteur reported in the Reuters article.

Some German bakeries have renamed a local cake known as "Amerikaner" -- a disk-shaped pastry with icing on top -- as "Peace-ies," bearing a peace sign piped in chocolate sauce.

What goes around comes around, I guess.