The war on terror is not over; yet it is not endless. We do not know the day of final victory, but we have seen the turning of the tide. No act of the terrorists will change our purpose, or weaken our resolve, or alter their fate. Their cause is lost. Free nations will press on to victory.

- Remarks by the President from the USS Abraham Lincoln At Sea Off the Coast of San Diego, California

I guess al-Qaeda didn't get the memo...

Kudos to Florida Senator and 2004 Presidential candidate Bob Graham, who yesterday took the current Administration to task for diverting precious resources that could have been used to make the world a little safer and prevent bombings such as the ones that happened in Riyadh earlier this week on our splendid little imperial venture against Baghdad.

Oh, and about the occupation: looks like Rumsfeld's boys dropped the postwar reconstruction ball big time, as retired Jay Garner and a host of other Pentagon/DoD flunkies are quietly being replaced by people with actual experience in this sort of thing (or so I hope!). I can't believe this is the same country that parachuted in civil servants along with advancing Allied forces in Germany during World War Two, so as to avoid the power vacuum, looting, civil strife, and all-around anarchy that has attended the United States' "victory" in Iraq. A full month after American troops captured Baghdad, the city of ten million souls is still without dependable electricity or clean drinking water, lawlessness is still an ongoing problem, and many residents are already pining for the good old days of the Baathist police state, when at the very least there was peace and order and a functioning health care system. Well, don't you worry, folks - apparently we're hiring back hundreds if not thousands of Saddam's old apparatus to fill the gaping holes in the civil service infrastructure we created. Never mind that the beat cops we are now paying to return to their jobs used to be the rank and file of a police state! Can Dubya and Co. really be that stupid? Sure, let's rehire the S.S. to maintain law and order in downtown Berlin! Good idea!

Now you know why I've been sticking to song lyrics, baby pictures, and updates on my writing for so long...