Thanks YDS and Roldo! Good to be mixing it up with you all again. Thanks most for the best wishes. We’ll get Ms. Plunderbund back ASAP!

That said, there was a great piece on, I think, American Experience,” on public TV last night. It went back and forth on two Vietnam war fronts, one an ambush attack in Vietnam by the Vietcong and the other a peaceful demonstration at the U of Wisconsin made violent by police. It was amazingly well done with the reporting involving participants on both sides - U. S. vets and Cong vets, students and police -interviewed years after. One thing that struck me was a Vietnamese farmer, formerly a Cong, who said he went back to the place of the ambush and saw the U. S. dead soldier. He said something like, “They were so big. Their thighs were as large as we were. Why did the come here?” He couldn’t understand. The war went on eight years beyond the time when U. S. leaders knew we couldn’t win.

The same is now true in Iraq. And it’s likely though we’ll get another president in 2008, neither Republican or Democrat that will pull the troops out because “We aren’t going to lose a war on my watch.”

We’re not tough enough on our leaders. Isn’t it time for some real talk about our President. Bush is what we used to call “a fuck’up.”

As in, “Stay away from that guy, he’s a fuck-up and will only bring you trouble.” Well, Bush is a first class fuck-up and everything he touches turns badly. In his case, deadly.

Out with the fuck-ups.

WB, Eric!