No More Vietnams. Or Iraqs, Or Aghanistans.

SecDef Gates thinks the folly of the US engaging in a land war in Asia has finally sunk in:

WEST POINT, NY — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates bluntly told an audience of West Point cadets on Friday that it would be unwise for the United States to ever fight another war like Iraq or Afghanistan, and that the chances of carrying out a change of regime in that fashion again are slim.

“In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,’ as General MacArthur so delicately put it,” Mr. Gates told an assembly of Army cadets here.

Hmm - Afghanistan is not exactly in the past tense in terms of decision making.

Mr. Gates also has an interesting concern about the future career parh of our currently highly-experienced officer corps:

A decade of constant conflict has trained a junior officer corps with exceptional leadership skills, he told the cadets, but the Army may find it difficult in the future to find inspiring work to retain its rising commanders as it fights for the money to keep large, heavy combat units in the field.

“Men and women in the prime of their professional lives, who may have been responsible for the lives of scores or hundreds of troops, or millions of dollars in assistance, or engaging or reconciling warring tribes, may find themselves in a cube all day re-formatting PowerPoint slides, preparing quarterly training briefs, or assigned an ever-expanding array of clerical duties,” Mr. Gates said. “The consequences of this terrify me.”

How do you keep 'em down in the cubicle after they seen Kabul?  One might worry that our military will have an unusually high bias for action.

Comments

[Rob Crawford]

One might worry that our military will have an unusually high bias for action.

I think I've gone permanently blind from my eyes rolling so far back into my head.

[clarice]

Iraq was no supposed to be a big land war..it was supposed to be about toppling a madman and tuning the place over to the various recognized religious and secular leaders until the Dept of State fot inolved and Brener.

As for Afghanistan it's this president who turned it into this mess--Bush simply wanted to deny the Taliban a sheltering state.

[clarice]

***Iraq was noT supposed to be a big land war..it was supposed to be about toppling a madman and tuRning****

[Pops]

I disagree, there is nothing wrong with having an actual war, where we actually topple countries, destroy cities, wipe out populations until the entire enemy left is begging on their knees for forgiveness or death.

What we are doing is a police action, we have good guys and bad guys and were protecting the so-called good guys, from the bad guys, we are not conquering, nor defeating the true enemy.

Gates should first define what he considers a 'war'. If you haven't wiped out at least 80 percent of the capability to fight..its not a war.

[Captain Hate]

So does that mean we're only sending Predators into Pockeestahn? Is that what teh ghey training is all about?

[Pops]

If on Sept 12th 2001 Kandahar, Kabul, Baghdad and Tehran weren't smoking Nuclear holes in the ground, then we weren't really serious about telling the enemy to not F--- with us.

[Ignatz]

--If on Sept 12th 2001 Kandahar, Kabul, Baghdad and Tehran weren't smoking Nuclear holes in the ground, then we weren't really serious about telling the enemy to not F--- with us.--

I wouldn't go quite that far Pops, but if the dictators of those countries and their henchmen weren't either already dead or imminently so, then we weren't serious.

[LouP]

There are so many things wrong with this speech...

First problem: "...that the chances of carrying out a change of regime in that fashion again are slim..." is not a proper military objective. It's a political objective. "Defeating the enemy" is a military objective. (There's a subtle but very important difference.)

Second problem: "...may find themselves in a cube all day re-formatting PowerPoint slides..." is only required when the POTUS and his administration do not fully support the military objective. Besides, according to Rolling Stone, that's now defined as Pys Ops so a no-no.

Third problem: "...fights for the money to keep large, heavy combat units in the field..." See Second Problem above. Then change "heavy combat" to "NECESSARY." I don't know whether this is Gates' problem, or West Point's, but it sure looks like someone's still trying to fight the last war.

[Rick Ballard]

Won't the officer corps be satisfied with working on sodomist appreciation training manuals? I would think that between sodomist appreciation training and gay victory parades they would have plenty to do. Just learning not to flinch upon hearing "I've got your back" will take months.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

I think it is, "I've got your six."

[Jack is Back!]

Pardon my "clarician" post but using my iPhone:)

[Frau Nachwievor]

Did Capt. just call teh gheys "prepators" to be sent into Pakistan?

Unrelated, the uniforms of Muammar Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi are to die for.

[Army of Davids]

Public sector (Soviet) unions will be out in force this weekend. (Community) Organizing for America will be right there with them. One and the same pretty much.

[sbw]

So either Gates is parroting the President, or he's gone off the reservation. Either way, I don't care for what he said, when he said it, and how he said it.

[sbw]

"the uniforms of Muammar Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi are to die for."

No, they are q'eer.

[Frau Nachwievor]

Time to don our Tea Party shirts, AoD? The weather forecast on our coast is for snow, rain, cold and colder. I hope so.

Did Gen. McArthur deliberately forget about the *Philippines* where his father and Gen. Pershing fought and won? Insurgency? Jungle warfare? You, bet.

[matt]

The military already has legions of Power Point Rangers. The bureaucracy is so dense it's scary. nodes linked to cells linked to program managers and their cadres, and the PCness of it all is horrifying.

A Captain has to get authorization from a general 5 layers above him to release guns on an Apache when he has insurgents in sight, for goodness sakes. 80% of the time the answer is no and when it is cleared, the insurgents are usually 10 miles away or the helo has to rtb for gas.

There is a new Catch 22 waiting to be written about this mess.

[clarice]

what "clarician" post, JiB? You posting in invisible ink again?

[Patrick R. Sullivan]

Great! In January 1950 Dean Acheson made a speech in which he effectively said we'd have to have our heads examined if we sent an army to Korea. Six months later we had to do just that.

[Ignatz]

--A Captain has to get authorization from a general 5 layers above him to release guns on an Apache when he has insurgents in sight, for goodness sakes. 80% of the time the answer is no and when it is cleared, the insurgents are usually 10 miles away or the helo has to rtb for gas.--

Nation building means never doing anything for which you might have to say you're sorry.

[Danube of Thought]

I think it's time forvthat tired rechnocrat to start spending more time with his family. How inspiring for the cadets.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

What does Gates know about a military mission, he is a CIA guy? Their job is to foment political upheaval and run psy-ops, it is the military's job to take the objective and hold it, by taking out as many of the enemy as necessary to achieve the goal.

[Frau Nachwievor]

matt, and we curse that the military ballots are not collected in time to count.

(shhhhhh...both of Gary Taubes' books are on the right margin of my current TM page as well as Bing West's new book. Why would Obama want to shut down the intertubes when he gets so much info about us from them? Hmmmmmm)

[matt]

besides, it's not really a war. It's a contingency operation. As the dictionary tells us:

" a contingency operation is a military operation that is either designated by the Secretary of Defense as a contingency operation or becomes a contingency operation as a matter of law."

This falls under the stay puft doctrine of bureaucratese, to wit there is exactly no substance to or connection with logical thought processes; a linguistic equivalent to the similarly named marshmallow. It is a corn syrup based description containing only worthless calories with no nutritional value.

War has a way of grabbing nations by the lapel and whacking them upside the head, which the good Secretary seems to have forgotten, and we always begin new wars fighting the last one. All of those MRAP's in Afghanistan will be like unto the fossils of dinosaurs in the next one.

[Captain Hate]

Gates has been such a disaster as Secretary of Defense; is anybody surprised by him giving such an obtuse speech?

[narciso]

Gates, was not even an operator, he was an an analyst, back in the day, a hawk on Casey's staff, running the Iraq/Afghan/ and Central
American accounts, then he went to College
Park and went native.

[matt]

there just isn't much of this spirit left anymore:

Mongol General: Hao! Dai ye! This is good, but what is best in life?

Conan: The open steppe, fleet horse, falcons at your wrist, and the wind in your hair.

Mongol General: Wrong! Conan! What is best in life?

Conan: To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.

[Extraneus]

The Gospel according to everyone Gates cares about says that the Bush Doctrine was a catastrophe. What else is the guy going to say? That democracy in Iraq might result in a stable, long-term ally right in the heart of the Middle East? That taking out Saddam and Sons, protecting the people from the Bathists and insurgents, preventing a civil war with untold horrors for innocent people, and helping them get a constitution and relatively democratic government in place, might have been a good thing, considering the alternatives? That Iraq's example might inspire other oppressed people in the Middle East? Come on. This is the same guy who agreed to keep that job under Obama.

[Ignatz]

--That taking out Saddam and Sons, protecting the people from the Bathists and insurgents, preventing a civil war with untold horrors for innocent people, and helping them get a constitution and relatively democratic government in place, might have been a good thing, considering the alternatives?--

Ex, I think it's possible the Bush doctrine may not turn out too terrible in Iraq but I'm hardly optimistic about that.
But here is one alternative that might be worth considering;
What if we had smashed Saddam and the Taliban and spent the requisite time to destroy their military infrastructure and kill most of their leaders and then withdrawn? And then using some of the hundreds of billions of $ and thousands of men and several years we have spent trying to pacify them if we instead smashed the Ayatollahs' military and hunted down their leadership and had done the same to the butcher in Damascus and then withdrawn again with the firm understanding the next one to tread on us would take twice the licking those four just did?
We would have probably spent no more money, possibly no more lives and made it quite clear to the lunatics in that part of the world it is better to leave us alone because we are not interested in civilizing anyone who harms us, but in destroying them. The terror masters would be dead or terrorized and their clients, the terrorists, would be without masters.

[anduril]

I've got a better idea than any of the above: let's bring more Muslims over here.

[Extraneus]

I might have been cool with that, Ig, although Mr. Pottery Barn surely would have balked. Who knows which strategy would have been better? My only point is that the question can't even been addressed by someone like Gates. He has to conform to the strategic vision of a strident, immature president who probably knows less about it than we do, and at any rate doesn't even appear to have our country's interests in mind. I lost respect for Gates the minute he agreed to stay on under Obama, a man who spent two years trying to sabotage our war effort, and in the process demonstrated no thoughtful approach to an alternative at all.

[narciso]

That was Rumsfeld's original plan, one wonders if Jay Rockefeller's little Middle Eastern briefing, didn't hav e alittle to do with derailing it, when he told Assad, what
our war plan was.

[daddy]

OT

For Iron Dog Snow Machine Race fans, update highlights:

The Iron Dog snowmachine race, stalled by a blizzard on the Bering Sea coast for the past two days, is back on.

The 13 teams remaining arrived safely in Unalakleet on Friday afternoon under a yellow flag — ordered on Thursday for safety reasons — officials announced that the race will restart at 5 p.m. in Unalakleet. That's exactly an hour from now.

"After leaving Nome, racers ran into what race officials described as “life-threatening” conditions on the 120-mile trail between Nome and Elim. Racers had to break trail through as much as 7 feet of heavy, wet snow in some places where the trail was drifted and they also encountered waist-deep overflow on creeks and rivers. It took them about six hours to reach Elim, a trip that normally takes two hours."

"Race leader Marc McKenna called race marshal Chris Graeber from the trail after leaving Nome on Thursday and told her, “People are going to die out here.” The racer told Graeber that the trail was impassable and that the riders were completely wet." Link.

Todd Palin is still in the hunt. He is technically in 3rd place timewise, back about 24 minutes due to having to do longer maintenance time on his machine than competitors, but with about 850 miles left to go anything can happen.

In other news, the Sled Dog races are going on today in downtown Anchorage and Iditirod is just about to start.

[bunky]

Gates feels he is finally accepted by the DC elite and he will do ANYTHING to cement that. He wasn't even for the surge.

[Rick Ballard]

Ignatz,

I believe you would have to toss in thinning the Saudi prince herd by 85-90% in order to have the impact which you seek. I also believe that you'll see your hypothesis tested within ten years. There will be reprisals as Europe shoves the muslim rent seekers back out of Europe and I don't anticipate European reaction to be be touchy feely at all. The OPM shortage makes the "rubble doesn't cause trouble" option very appealing.

[narciso]

I've been following that, daddy, one would think this wouldn't be happening with global warming, this seems a more severe course then
I've read in a while.

[Pagar]

"! In January 1950 Dean Acheson made a speech"
That speech may have been why the North Koreans/Russia thought it safe to try to take South Korea.

"On January 12, 1950, U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson declared that the American line of defense in the Pacific "runs along the Aleutians to Japan and then goes to the Ryukyus [and] from the Ryukyus to the Philippine Islands." Korea -- as well as Formosa -- had been excluded. In May, Senator Tom Connally declared that Russia could seize Korea without American intervention because the peninsula was "not very greatly important."

These statements could hardly be missed in Moscow and Pyongyang. Even though Congress did eventually approve aid to Korea, and even though Acheson later explained that the defense line was drawn through places where America had troops, it would be surprising if the Communists did not conclude that America would not fight to defend South Korea."

LUN

IMO, any nation/any bunch of terrorists anywhere have now ujnderstood that the Obama Administration will not interfere with what ever they want to do against any of our so-called allies.

[Pagar]

"when he told Assad, what our war plan was."

Narciso, with the Democrats spilling every secret we had, to anyone who said they were on the other side I suspect every plan the Bush Administration has was compromised.

[Boatbuilder]

Ex--very will said. Iggy--you may be right, but we'll never know. Short of total war, the polical sphere limits what can reasonably be undertaken or accomplished. Hell, look what it took to go into Iraq, and what poeple like Gates have taken away from it.

[Pops]

I find the Federal Income Tax to be unconstitutional! I have been waivering on this for a long time, I just can't morally defend a law that provides no equal protection. I'm not going to ask Congress to overturn it, but as for my house, I've directed my staff to not comply with it.

[Pops]

And I am pretty sick and tired of all ther whining about the rights of government unions. You have no rights that everyone else doesn't have, get over it.

You claim to want fair bargaining yet you stacked the deck by buying off the peoples board of directors (SEnate, House, Governor, President, etc.) with tens of millions in campaign contributions. You'd all be arrested for fraud and bribery if you did that in a private company.
If you want a level playing field, then you need to be barred from giving any type of donation of any type or amount to any government offical, or person running for an office.

Its no different then if one football team invited all the refereees over for a huge party before the game with free hookers, new cars and thousands of dollars in bribes and then claim they won the game fair and square when the refs called every play in their favor..

[narciso]

I tell you this Cole character, besides being craven, not to say treacherous, has to be stupid, how does one expect to act vis a vis,
such a 'railroading'

[Pops]

We now have another Jimmy Hoffa story in Wisconsin. We got 14 Senators who have disappeared and just when Richard Trumka showed up in town.

If I were the Republican Governor, I would seriously be investigating whether these Democrats have been threatened by the Unions. He should offer them protection and vow to not let the unions do to them what they did to Hoffa.

They should immediately issue Material Witness warrants for all these Senators and request protection from the union members who have voiced repeatedly there intent to commit violence.

Clealry the only reason they have stayed aware is because they fear violence from the unions, if they return, they could prove those threats have been rescinded.

[Jim Ryan]

Today I felt hope for the economic viability of the country for the first time in several years. I was listening to an interview of Paul Ryan on the radio. He said that in the next budget he was going to begin cutting and he intended in the long term to leave our children and grandchildren a federal government with no debt. You could tell that he meant it and was serious, determined and sincere.

[Danube of Thought]

I'm with you, JimR. I think we are at the point of no return: either we stop the craziness here and now, or the Greeks, Labourites and Frenchmen among us will prevail and the public trough will sustain them until we all go down.

The sight of "public servants" shrieking and bawling at the prospect of their corrupt racket finally being shut down is a demoralizing and disgraceful one.

[MarkD]

Too bad we don't always get to have a war on our terms.

One day you stay out in town too late and drink too much, and the next morning you wake up and your ship is being bombed...

[Tea Baggers Suck]

"Ich vermute, jeder Plan der Bush-Administration hat beeinträchtigt wurde."

....... durch seine eigene Korruption. Ja, gurgeln Sie die Teebeutel-und sind überrascht, wenn der Geschmack Urin ähnelt.

Suck auf Cheneys Hoden und finden Sie ähnliche Freude.,

[Jack is Back!]

clarice,

That is about the 10th time I have lostva post using iPhone. Weird but understandable if you depend on apple go lesf the way.

[Jack is Back!]

I mean you can't even spell properly on it.

[Torquemada]

"איך כאָשעד יעדער פּלאַנירן די בוש אַדמיניסטראַטיאָן איז געווען קאַמפּראַמייזד."

....... דורך אים ס אייגן פארדארבונג. יא, איר שווענקען די טיי-טאַש און זענען סאַפּרייזד ווען דער טאַם ריזעמבאַלז פּישעכץ.

זויגן אויף טשייני ס בייצים און איר וועט געפֿינען ענלעך פאַרגעניגן.

[Pofarmer]

Well, awesome. World wars it is then.

[Janet]

although Mr. Pottery Barn surely would have balked.

They are in never-ending balk mode no matter what. I love Ignatz's 7:35 idea. I'd maybe add dropping loads of Bibles & copies of our Constitution into each country after the route...but otherwise it sounds good.

[Rick Ballard]

Jim,

On February 5, 1976, Baroness (then Mrs.) Thatcher said: "Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people's money. It's quite a characteristic of them."

The day has come for the socialists, just as it did in '91 for the communists. I believe that the collapse is going to be as surprisingly swift for the prog/socialists here as it was for the commies in the USSR. There's just no way out - and no money left.

[Bushophiles take some notes on Iraq Nation building]

Tunisia, Egypt, Libya,

Thank you Wikileaks

[Dicktators Suck]

"Baroness (then Mrs.) Thatcher said:"

I think you mean Madame Pinochet, Marmalard.

[MayBee]

Have you all seen this bit of repulsivity from Ben Smith:

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is circulating a number of clips to reporters suggesting that Sen. Scott Brown's (R-Mass.) revelations of sexual abuse as a child is either a political stunt or a hypocritical move in the light of his endorsement of a congressional candidate who was accused of insensitivity to sexual assault -- including this column by the editor of a Cape Cod website:

Many have questioned how Brown could let a pedophile run free instead of stopping what could be a serial molester who may now have been at it for upwards of 40 years. Among the “believers” are many who are appalled that a U.S. senator would throw a literary grenade at a respected Christian summer camp and not disclose a name so that Cape officials can pursue the attacker and defend their reputation.

On the other side are alumni and friends of the camp who accuse the senator of fabricating the whole matter for political purposes – or at least to sell more books – leaving Camp Good News with a damaged reputation and no way to refute his accusations.

Neither story line is playing well with readers of CapeCodToday.com. Those who believe Brown’s story feel that his political career cannot survive his sheltering of the molester. Those who feel he fabricated the account feel he should step down from office if he is proven to have lied.

UPDATE: DSCC also circulated a piece by the Boston Globe's Glen Johnson and a column by the paper's Joan Vennochi about Brown's sexual abuse as it related to his decision to endorse Jeff Perry, a losing GOP congressional candidate who was accused of covering up a sexual abuse charge while he was a police officer.

[narciso]

Really what percent in those countries are internet savvy, how about literate, I think the fact that we're inflating the price of food through QE2, (btw, who pointed that out some months ago)and burning the rest for fuel, had a much larger impact

[Jim Miller]

I wonder what the South Koreans think of that speech?

It sounds to me as if Gates just said we shouldn't defend them this time round.

Those familiar with the Korean War will remember that MacArthur made a brilliant landing at Pusan -- and then just months later blundered terribly in the later stages of the pursuit.

Here's how the West Point Atlas describes our defeat:

"In retrospect, the defeat of the U. N. forces in northern Korea contains several interesting lessons. The U. N. forces--initially at least--were not greatly outnumbered; they possessed several times the fire power of their opponents and had outstanding superiority in armor and artillery. They were (with the relative exception of ROK units) fully motorized and suffered no major logistical shortages. Finally, they had complete air and naval superiority. Yet they suffered one of the most definite defeats ever inflicted on American forces by a foreign army."

And who was most responsible for that defeat? General MacArthur. So it is no surprise that he soured on the idea of winning wars in Asia.

(Incidentally, the Atlas also says that the reports of "human sea" attacks were mostly "the products of rear-echelon imaginations".)

[Melinda Romanoff]

Alligator Arms!

I've missed you, so!

Pinched any candy lately?

[Melinda Romanoff]

Oh, sorry, you prefer the free gum in the library, under the tables in the children's reading room.

[Frau Steingehirn]

Achtung! Someone's Babel Fish is kaput.

[Jim Ryan]

Rick, I don't think our society can handle collapse.

[Danube of Thought]

And, RickB, the place where the defenses are breached and the ever-accelerating roll-up begins is with the public employee unions. It's been a corrupt, decades-old racket that has hummed along below the surface during flush times, and is going to be brought to a screeching halt.

Now that "shared sacrifice" is in vogue, ordinary people are starting to wonder, just who in the hell are these privileged elite, and how did things get this way? And the Dems have nothing to offer in response but slogans reminiscent of "Bad, Truly Bad, Chinese Opera."

This is going to be a mighty fine show.

[Melinda Romanoff]

Jim-

There's a core that is more than prepared, it's the pharmacology base that concerns me.

[Dicktators Suck]

All Dictators and the top 2% shall have their assets frozen first, then they will work in minimum wage jobs and live in section 8 housing near the bus stop.

[Cleo]

My caseworker found my stuff. I freaked out and was in you-know-where for a while. I shat myself a lot because I hated the orderlies.

[Jim Ryan]

Mel, did you see my post the other day about the pianist I played with? Hod O'Brien. He had a trio with Scott LaFaro. He was in Oscar Pettiford's band. He's good. He's got a few years left, thank God. Hope he calls me again.

[Pofarmer]

Typepad-still sucks.

[Pofarmer]

Picked upmsome stuff frm some mennnites todah. Some of us will be fine.

[Melinda Romanoff]

Why bother with percentages, sponge, you know you crave all that isn't yours. Section 8 requires tax receipts, when it's gone, it's kinda hard to reach with those arms of yours.

Once again, you've found a way to come up short.

[Rick Ballard]

Jim Ryan,

I was referring to a collapse of the prostitute/John Democrat Party as DoT describes, not economic collapse. There's a reason why the President's advisers have deserted him and it's not just because he's as dumb as damned fence post.

[Dicktators Suck]

"Why bother with percentages"

Because Dictators and Business criminals are concerned with percentages, like how to steal 100% of everything.

Avarice is funny that way, doncha think?

[Porchlight]

I was listening to an interview of Paul Ryan on the radio.

Was that the Hannity interview, Jim Ryan? I heard it too. Ryan was fantastic. It was the most substantive interview I've heard on the radio since hearing Bolton on (I think) Ingraham's show a few weeks back. It gave me hope as well to know there are leaders out there who are in positions of power who are really serious about this stuff.

[Melinda Romanoff]

Jim-

Yes.

I'm debating with myself about speaking with you, solely for the sake of the tapes, of course.

Think of the tapes, man!

They need, no, require, proper review.

And copies, definitely copies.

[Dicktators Suck]

Don't be on the wrong side of the Revolution, Tea Baggers.

[Jim Ryan]

Rick, ah, I see. I like that collapse. A lot.

Porchlight, yes, as I was driving home from work I heard it.

[Porchlight]

It definitely cheered me up, JimR. Glad I wasn't the only one. We're very lucky to have that guy on our side at this juncture.

[Cleo]

Sorry, cranky. Had to pay for my downers in kind today. Humiliating. What little of it I remember.

Also, Obama turning out to be a nothing like me is more painful than even a cocktail of booze, crack, and downers can erase. Worse than the lonliness.

Just kidding. Nothing's worse than that.

[Jim Ryan]

Mel, I'll look into tapes whenever I get the chance. I've already invited myself over to his house for sessions. Waiting by the phone now.

[Melinda Romanoff]

Oh, you mean "dictation". That makes so much more sense when you get can get your words understood e-loos-id-ly, like, through the sluice that limits your mind to merely seven symbols or less.

Reduced to pay for two months instead of one.

That has to make the cup shaking doubly painful. Not in front of the office, skrimpy, not good for show.

[Cleo]

Ben Smith has almost as much of an appetite for young boys as I do.

[clarice]

MayBee, I can't believe that's a winning strategy.well, politico's offices are being overrun by mice, perhaps that explains Smith's lack of judgement..he's writing under conditions of terror.

[Jim Ryan]

Thing is, Porch, "hope" is a very light word. It doesn't run deep. It's not fact-based. I have no idea whether Ryan can do what he intends, whether orderly collapse of the sort Rick mentioned is possible or whether economic collapse is more likely. I hope he can do it.

[Melinda Romanoff]

clarice-

The threat of hanthavirus is worry enough.

[Jim Ryan]

Mel, ah, yes. I thought you were talking about old session tapes he might have squirreled away. I have yet to interview the 95-year-old clarinetist who used to play whore houses and dance halls in the early 1930's, as you suggested.

[narciso]

No, his stupidity and mendacity well established before that.

[Melinda Romanoff]

Jim-

I'm looking at a 7", 2 channel, Akai reel to reel seeking live work. If he's willing to go to Hackensack, all I can do is write the letter, or telegram, that might entice Mr. Van Gelder to do another session.

Yes, he still works.

[Jim Ryan]

Mel, huh. Let me look into it. Not sure how to approach either of these gentlemen about such a proposition.

[Danube of Thought]

MacArthur's brilliant amphibious assault was at Inchon, port city of Seoul. Pusan was the port city at the southeastern corner of the peninsula, around which our troops had collapsed into what was called the Pusan Perimeter. That perimeer kept shrinking until it appeared to be a close-run thing, when suddenly MacA's forces landed in the enemy's rear, dashed eastward across the peninsula and isolated the entire North Korean army, then defeated them in detail.

So far so good, but he just didn't know when to halt his northward advance.

[Dicktators Suck]

"That makes so much more sense"

*chuckle

It's a race between you and Kim as to which
of you is going to be translatable, and which one
is going to recognize how being enigmatic is no substitute for clarity of thought or expression.

[Captain Hate]

It's one thing for us here to question the wisdom of Scott Brown saying what he did but the donkeycrats jumping on it to the press really sets the bar at a subterranean level.

[Dicktators Suck]

"Brown saying what he did but the donkeycrats jumping on it"

I, for one, believe Brown when he says he was molested several times. He clearly demonstrates all the behaviors consistent with that experience.

That, and a Pastor was the pedophile.

[Melinda Romanoff]

Jim-

No, YOUR tapes.

No more, no less, that's what life is, and I would like to just be able to pinch off a piece of the taffy.

[Jim Ryan]

Mel, ha! Well, I could make tapes, but they would pale in comparison to these two guys' stories!

[Melinda Romanoff]

Oh, great, bipolar, illiterate alligators.

Albino, too?

And they've kept you shielded from the seven symbol rule of short term memory, for good reason.

That, and your arms of course.

[Ignatz]

--Short of total war, the polical sphere limits what can reasonably be undertaken or accomplished. Hell, look what it took to go into Iraq, and what poeple like Gates have taken away from it.--

Nothing succeeds like success and we were quite successful in crushing the Iraqi and Afghan goverments and militaries. Both were also quite popular.
What bogged us down, both militarily and politically, was the notion of making silk purses out of the sows ears each country is, which is not without some merit but it is also the riskiest thing, the most unpopular thing and the thing most likely to create political and public backlash.
A series of smash and grab wars, which no one could characterize as losses or quagmires, would have not only been quicker, they would have doubled the number of terrorist states we had defeated and raised the fear quotient exponentially amongst our remaining enemies and IMO been in the end the most politically defensible and popular strategy.

[Rick Ballard]

CH,

Has there been any news concerning the involvement of any patrons of Barney Frank's male brothel?

[Melinda Romanoff]

OK, Cleo-

Here's a serious question.

Is the Pacific Decadal Oscillation a function of mechanics or solar coronal discharge? I'll leave out the odds of planetary core decay.

That might be a bit of a "reach" even for you.

Good luck, shorty.

[Dicktators Suck]

"That, and your arms of course."

Now was that difficult?

Simple declarative sentences can do wonders for those working on their vocabulary. Now if you could just shake off those reptilian images from your genetic memory. I suggest you exfoliate those scales with a nice loofah. The limbic brain will be a greater challenge, but you have a great attitude, so hope is not a lost cause.

[Melinda Romanoff]

And still under seven.

How do your short linbs figure out what a dime is, other than size, of course?