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Currently at UW: 9.3; high today: 12, not that I had anything to do with it. It's supposed to be sunny and 14 tomorrow, and I am bloody well going to detach myself from this keyboard.
The evidence is mounting that, actually, what I'm going to do with all the time in which I am not tending yahoo fantasy teams is resume wasting my life away on usenet. No wait, I mean, exercising my intellect and wit and, uh, stuff. You know, like I do here. Oh dear.
In further news, Richard Perle actually doesn't think the invasion of Iraq was a mistake. Or something. I have never really known what exactly Vanity Fair is, and I've never been able to shake the impression that it's some sort of "women's magazine", but the accusation, now flying from the virtual pages of National Review Online, that Vanity Fair is a lefty rag of long standing, is, in the light of its being the ship to which Hitchens jumped from his former lefty rag, rather amusing.
Anyway, some bunch of Iraq-related business or other--that "Clinton-era war-gaming" (whatever that means) thing, among other things, anyway--got me to thinking today, what would it take to keep the lid on Iraq? What, in fact, did it take for Saddam Hussein to keep the lid on Iraq? Was there something other than pure force that it took (so, assume it's true you can't do it with 400 000 troops--could you do it with a million?), and, if so, how could that be replicated by a foreign power?
My guess is that what it took, and would take, is siding with some faction: if you're not for any one of the major factions, then, at best, none of them are for you, and most likely, some, if not all, of them are against you. But if that's the case, then the war, supposing that the aim of the war is creating a stable, non-oppressive liberal democracy, is unwinnable in principle.
The evidence is mounting that, actually, what I'm going to do with all the time in which I am not tending yahoo fantasy teams is resume wasting my life away on usenet. No wait, I mean, exercising my intellect and wit and, uh, stuff. You know, like I do here. Oh dear.
In further news, Richard Perle actually doesn't think the invasion of Iraq was a mistake. Or something. I have never really known what exactly Vanity Fair is, and I've never been able to shake the impression that it's some sort of "women's magazine", but the accusation, now flying from the virtual pages of National Review Online, that Vanity Fair is a lefty rag of long standing, is, in the light of its being the ship to which Hitchens jumped from his former lefty rag, rather amusing.
Anyway, some bunch of Iraq-related business or other--that "Clinton-era war-gaming" (whatever that means) thing, among other things, anyway--got me to thinking today, what would it take to keep the lid on Iraq? What, in fact, did it take for Saddam Hussein to keep the lid on Iraq? Was there something other than pure force that it took (so, assume it's true you can't do it with 400 000 troops--could you do it with a million?), and, if so, how could that be replicated by a foreign power?
My guess is that what it took, and would take, is siding with some faction: if you're not for any one of the major factions, then, at best, none of them are for you, and most likely, some, if not all, of them are against you. But if that's the case, then the war, supposing that the aim of the war is creating a stable, non-oppressive liberal democracy, is unwinnable in principle.
