Recent months in the US news have been compared to Chaucer's high comic Miller's Tale from the Canterbury collection.

September and the 9 - 11 Remembrance opened with General Petraeus' expected glowing report to Congress as word of the mounting casualties associated with his surge vanished from the newspapers. In the prevailing schizophrenia Congress authorized even more spending on the Iraki war. Even as General Petraeus urged Congress that with just a little more effort the campaign in Iraq could prove to be a success, his predecessor General Sanchez derided the Administration for its overly optimistic projections and its utter lack of preparedness for the type of resistance US forces face. Regime spokesmen dismissed General Sanchez's gloomy outlook as sour grapes. General Sanchez reechoed opinions voiced at the Army War College that the strategic reach had exceeded tactical capabilities. The Society offering due respect to both Generals took the appointment of a Spaniard and then a Greek as a sign that the Army elite had written off the war long ago and was refusing to devote serious attention to it.

According to our own Sir Harry, the Army's elite correctly moves in this direction. At point X + 1, the war effort is doomed to fail. What the High Command ought do is preserve forces for an eventual defense in the homeland and make it capable of meeting terrorist threats here. Conventional police are good for traffic tickets, but are unprepared to deal with a military situation. Dr. Davies concurred with most learned Professor Gary Teach's observation that there is little evidence from the partying mood of self-indulgent spending that this is a country at war. Dr. Davies analogized the situation to the merrymaking in Berlin as the Russians stormed the citadel in 1945. There is that same giddy mood without any appreciation of the cataclysm awaiting.

In the modern version of the Miller's Tale we have honoured General Petraeus by casting him as the character of Nicholas The Clerk who persuaded Alisoun's husband the carpenter John that Noah's flood was about to return.

One of the major problems in the Iraki war effort has been general unpreparedness for war. Yet unlike much of the informed public, The Society refuses to blame President Bush. Indeed like Alisoun of the Miller's Tale he is in total control of the situation. Meanwhile Republican hopeful Romney, son of a clown, declared his continued support for the war-- so long as his sons are not required to serve. Columbia University in a controversial decision allowed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the President of Iran, to address the student body to preach various historical fictions and to proclaim Iran as the savior of the world from US imperialism. The occasion was marked by massive demonstrations, mostly peaceful. Two days later, Congress authorized the US President to undertake a war against Iran.

Generally speaking, in time of war, it is foolish to offer your enemy a public podium. However, the Society once again saluted President Bush for his brilliance in presenting the Neo-cons with the face of evil that they would continue to support his policies.

Mr Bush sure is as crafty as Alisoun of The Miller's Tale. He even has the neo-cons playing Absolon the Parish Clerk so smitten that the neo-cons are kissing the ever going rotunda.

Blackwater mercenaries attached to Haliburton, with smiles aglow reported various atrocities in Iraq including the slaying of a crowd of at least 20 unarmed civilians. The semiofficial voice of the US government, the New York Times, endorsed the action saying that since there is no law, there can be no war crime.

This is not exactly true according to our own Sir Harry former Judge Advocate. War crimes like piracy are offenses of universal jurisdiction, open to any civilized nation to prosecute. Whether the US will remain so powerful that it can immunize and sanction war crimes is an open question.

More Chinese goods were recalled from US shelves as a gentle nudge at the coffers of the People's Republic. The Red Chinese may be caught in the US spiral. The only way for the US to pay back the PRC is for the PRC to lend the US more money to do so. In the midst of the trade dispute with the PRC, The US Congress, over the vigorous protest of Chinese Officials, honored the Dalai Lama. Red China regards the Lamaists as a terrorist organization and has asked the US to desist from sponsoring terrorism in the Chinese province of Tibet.

The US House of representatives followed suit with a slap in the face to Turkey condemning Turkish atrocities in the genocide of the Armenians in the early 20th century. Little mentioned inside the US since the Victorian Age, Ottoman Turkey during a war with Imperial Russia carried out a scorched earth policy in Armenia killing Armenian civilians and seizing their lands. Many immigrated to the US where reports of the atrocities were ignored. In the time Armenian complaints were derided; Armenian immigrants' laments were dismissed as the wailings of the "screaming Armenians." The attempt to rectify previous indifference touched off bitter resentment in Turkey which called the resolution a betrayal of a century of friendship. Turkey meanwhile moved troops to the Kurdish border and began aerial attacks on targets within US occupied northern Irak.

A wag argued after the stinging US condemnation the Turk sent his armies Eastward to finish off the job.

Regime ally Paki Potentate General Pervez Musharraf, though initially moving toward democratic elections, initiated a crackdown on pro-democracy advocates arresting the country's entire Supreme Court thought ready to declare his "election" void. Officially The Regime criticizes Musharraf's actions. Musharraf is deemed essential to the Regime's Middle East policy.

As US casualties continue to rise, the US Army announced court-martials of a Lieutenant Colonel the highest ranking officer charged with war crimes in the Iraki war. The incident which provoked the war crime was a road side bomb. After the surprise attack soldiers performed a "punishment party" in reprisal.

The Society was highly critical of The Regime's action. "Punishment parties are a necessary facet of military power." A part of the problem is that to keep enthusiasm for the war effort the Regime must persuade the neo-cons of their moral superiority even while they are consenting to an appointment of yet another Attorney general who openly sanctions torture as a means of state policy.

Could it be the dwindling armed forces represent John the Carpenter who's off sidelined uselessly waiting for Noah's flood? This could be bad news for Nicholas. Read the Miller's Tale and find out who gets the Red Hot Poker in the End.

In the midst of calamity, there is humor. Defeated Presidential candidate John Kerry watched silently as a supporter was pulled from a microphone during question time in a Town Meeting and viciously beaten by police. Kerry described by observers as stoned, looked on as an admirer who questioned the legitimacy of the last election was dragged from the auditorium. Police was said to be laughing and joking outside after the incident. If that`s the way he likes his friends to be treated, imagine what he'd do to his enemies, said one onlooker.

Cheerio