Lie #4: The real heroes of Vietnam were the protesters and draft-resisters who forced America to give up a disastrously wrong policy. If this was heroism, it was dirt cheap heroism.

As an addendum, if dirt cheap heroism is getting shot dead by the National Guard at Kent State, then I'm really curious to know what this dolt considers pricey. Mr. Goebbels, your black pill is waiting.

No More Vietnams

In Iraq as in Vietnam, the government gave the American people an unrealistic estimate of how hard the war would be. Both times it was an honest but costly mistake, which could probably have been avoided.

This is in fact a total lie. Vietnam we got involved in as part of the idea to contain Communism, and on that level was understandable. Iraq is a war that was started because the White House wanted a war. The analogies to Vietnam are completely wrong there.

They continue to be wrong in virtually every other respect. In Vietnam we had about four times as many troops. It was fought village to village with no clear lines of sight because of the jungle. The other side was supplied by other countries. None of that is the case to any great extent in Iraq. The other side *might* be getting *some* of their IEDs from Iran, but at that point they aren't IEDs anymore, that I in IED is for improvised.

Vietnam failed because we were fighting on the wrong side. The South was criminally corrupt in every way while the North was a country created by a hero of WWII (and if you think otherwise of Ho Chi Minh, you have critically underestimated what was going on in Vietnam, that is also not to say that the north wasn't bad, but bad led by a puppet and bad led by a war hero, you do the math). It was a war we could have double or even tripled our forces in and STILL not won, because the people didn't want us there, any more than they wanted the French there before us.

On THAT level, we're looking at the same thing. The Iraqis want us to get the hell out. Instead, Halliburton is building "enduring bases" in the Iraqi desert. This administration has no plans to leave Iraq, EVER.

This comparison is a load of crap because it's not looking at the reasons we got involved, nor what we're actually facing. A country where virtually every man woman and child would like nothing better than for us to pack up our toys and get the hell out of their country.

No More Vietnams

British forces backed by armored vehicles rushed to the area but were met by a hail of stones from the crowd of at least 250 people, who jumped for joy and raised their fists as a plume of thick smoke rose into the air from the crash site.

And this is in a PEACEFUL section of Iraq. Hearts and minds? We're fucked. The only way to pacify Iraq as far as having our troops there is to get rid of all the Iraqis.

Iraqis Cheer Crash of British Helicopter - Yahoo! News

The Journal also suggested that other lawmakers might be implicated. I've learned from a well-connected source that those under intense scrutiny by the FBI are current and former lawmakers on Defense and Intelligence comittees—including one person who now holds a powerful intelligence post.

Might that be... Porter Goss?

Red Lights on Capitol Hill? (Harpers.org)

Today, May 3—in case you didn't know it—is "National Day To Prevent Teen Pregnancy." In the past decade, possibly no social program has been as dramatically effective as the effort to reduce teen pregnancy, and no results so uniformly celebrated. Between 1990 and 2000 the U.S. teen pregnancy rate plummeted by 28 percent, dropping from 117 to 84 pregnancies per 1,000 women aged 15-19. Births to teenagers are also down, as are teen abortion rates. It's an achievement so profound and so heartening that left and right are eager to take credit for it, and both can probably do so. Child-health advocates generally acknowledge that liberal sex education and conservative abstinence initiatives are both to thank for the fact that fewer teenagers are ending up in school bathroom stalls sobbing over the results of a home pregnancy test.

Read the full article. From the sound of the rest of it, the real reason for the lack of pregnancies isn't that teens are more responsible and either use condoms or don't have sex, but that the little swimmers don't swim so good.

Maybe a comparison of teen STD rates is in order.
UPDATE here's the comparison data from the CDC. While the gonorrhea rate is down, the syphilis rate is up and the chlamydia rate is basically unchanged. The fundamental upshot seems to be teen pregnancy is down because male fertility is for shit, and not because of education or abstinance.

Sperm counts and teen pregnancy rates. By Liza Mundy

An executive at a heart disease charitable foundation who embezzled close to a quarter of a million dollars over two years to pay a dominatrix to beat him was sentenced Tuesday to two to six years in prison.

First, this is just sad, pathetic and funny all at the same time. Sad in the sense that the guy stole to do it, pathetic in the fact that he ripped of a charity to do so and funny in the sense that now he gets to go to jail where he can expect to be beaten on a daily basis for being such a moron.

Second, does the picture have anything to do with the subject at all???

Charity exec who stole to pay dominatrix gets jail - Yahoo! News

"It would be handed over to government — that's where the money would go. It would be taken out of the economy and given to people here in Washington, D.C., to spend."

Not to belabor the point, nor dismiss the questions of government inefficiency, but it seems to me that spending the money puts it right back into the economy.

Bush Makes Case for Extending Tax Cuts - Yahoo! News

After seven days of deliberation, the nine men and three women rebuffed the government's appeal for death for the only person charged in this country in the four suicide jetliner hijackings that killed nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001.

Good for the jury. He doesn't get to be a martyr. He gets the privilege of being someone's bitch in prison for a while before someone decides he doesn't have a "purty mouth" and shivs him.

Moussaoui Gets Life for Role in Sept. 11 - Yahoo! News

Morales also said the state would retake control of Bolivian hydrocarbons companies that were privatized in the 1990s, with the state taking over shares in the hands of foreign companies and of semipublic Bolivian entities.

Looks like Morales is tired of "outsourcing." And the picture with the article is perfect, Morales, Chavez and of all people Fidel Castro. It remains to be seen what effect this will have, but my first guess is, oil is going to accelerate towards $80 a barrel.

Morales Nationalizes Natural Gas Industry - Yahoo! News

The criminal investigation was disclosed at a court hearing in a lawsuit over the F.D.A.'s actions on the emergency contraceptive Plan B, a subject of bitter contention during Dr. Crawford's tenure as acting commissioner and commissioner. After the pill's maker, Barr Laboratories, applied three years ago to sell the pill over the counter, the agency repeatedly delayed making a decision on the application.

While many lawmakers, abortion rights advocates and former F.D.A. officials said the delays had resulted from politics, Dr. Crawford and other agency officials said their concerns were scientific and legal.

Hey! Lying to Congress! Way to go Crawford! How far up the food and drug chain will this one go?

Ex-Head of F.D.A. Faces Criminal Inquiry - New York Times