The New Republic believes that Bush wants us to fear what will happen if we leave Iraq. This is a bad way to look at the problem. Bush needs to argue what we will accomplish by staying in Iraq. If we will not accomplish anything good then we must not be afraid of the inevitable; we must leave.

Ars Technica has a piece talking about whether adding ever increasing amounts of realism into games is a good thing. Warfare enthusiasts want developers to add clacking sounds when bullets pass nearby the user, invoking the sonic booms people will hear in real gun battles such as the following one from Abu Ghraid in 2005:

FoxNews interviewed President Clinton this week. He got very defensive when the interviewer asked why he had not done more to stop Bin Laden. He reminded us how little we knew about the threat: Republicans attacked his efforts as unnecessary at the time, fired the chief anti-terrorism export and held no talks on Bin Laden in the months leading to 9/11. He defended himself very well.

Update: Slate tells me I’m a Democrat.

So it seems anyway. Hurray! … ?

The Lebanese conflict does not — at present — appear to be expanding into a regional conflict.  But should it ever balloon into a regional — or global — war, it will happen when we are finally certain it will not.  Here are some reasons to be wary:

• Syria may be preparing for war by opening public bomb shelters for hte first time since 1973.
• Some Muslim countries like Jordan are afraid of getting sucked into the war
• This is likely because other muslim countries want to arm Hizb’allah.

 

Reading the Pajamas Media middle east reports, I am beginning to worry that this still has the potential to balloon into something big and scary.

But reading the actual article gives me more confidence in the Middle Eastern governments.

I have learned so many things about the Middle East during this recent Israel-Lebanon war: Druze, Canaan, Mount Lebanon, Phoenicia. Amazing to think Arabs trace their lineage back to Abraham and Moses. These people were at it fourty centuries ago!

I hope Israel refrains from destroying too many Roman ruins in their quest to teach Lebanon that it doesn’t pay to ignore home-grown terrorism.

Remember how everyone was so worried about people rising against Muslims after 9/11? Regular Americans were well behaved…unlike this Muslim American guy.