Heard an interesting interview with Gen. Clark the other day. Actually, they�re all interesting. He has a tin ear for politics � no, metallurgists of the future will toil for years to discover exactly what unusual material his ears are made from. Whatever it is, it keeps him from hearing and understanding the things that he says.
....
A Democrat could have a good shot at Bush�s job if he concentrated on spending, not tax cuts. But they can�t. They won�t. And so they send the message that will never cut your taxes. Ever. Can�t be done. 'We need to raise taxes and we must never alienate France' is not a winning strategy, I think.---Lileks, who fixed his calendar.

The title means nothing, I'm just out of ideas for a Monday title!

Bowling was its usual inconsistent mess. I had 111, 147, 167. We did win three, so just maybe we'll be out of the cellar.

Afterwards we went back to the Carmichael cache we missed last week, now that the guy has put in the correct coordinates. We didn't stop to talk to the firemen, though, as it was beginning to rain and we just decided to bag anything else and come home. See? How can one get a day's title out of that??

David Kay's report.

Sen. John Kerry again repeated his mantra that the United States went to war in Iraq with an "illegitimate coalition." Kerry has also used the term "fraudulent" to describe the 34 nations that have sent troops to Iraq, including Great Britain, Australia and Poland.

Someone, anyone, please get Kerry on the record of what impact his description of Great Britain, Australia, Poland, et. al., will have on the relationship between the U.S. and these countries should he become president.

Kerry, October 1971, in Doonesbury.

John Kerry and Vietnam Veterans, and more. Grrrrr. James Taranto, Profiles in Courage. And we have a list of Kerry flipflops.

David Frum:

The last thing America is, is an empire. My counter example is; we very badly needed and expected to have Turkish support in the war on Iraq. The Turks didn't give it and that put a spanner in some of our planning. Now, imagine if this were the Romans. Imagine if the emperor Trajan were planning an operation in Mesopotamia and the Cappadocians told him he couldn't use their territory. He would have lined the highways with crucified Cappadocians. That's what empires do, they do not say, "Oh, we'll respect what your parliament says and come from another direction".

Bush's support softening.

Paul Miller:

Now, it looks increasingly likely that Tenet�s agency failed America again with a poor strategy of intelligence gathering and analysis toward Iraq. Tenet had a year-and-a-half to restructure his agency to avoid the failures that led to 9/11, and while the Iraq situation is different - the WMD issue was always just one piece of the argument, and a �better safe than sorry� stance required action even with what has been found by Kay�s team - the failures in intelligence it exposes are precisely the same: Lack of human infiltration into the enemy�s leadership and planning; and a failure by analysts to gather all the pieces and connect the dots.
...
Meanwhile, Tenet remains director at CIA. Why?

Heh. Clark takes on another veteran.

I laugh, but you know, I'm sick of these dwarves already! My tolerance for lies is nowhere near that of the media.