Millennium CAzaellenge

Wake-up call

In the first few days of the exercise, using surprise and unorthodox tactics, the wily 64-year-old Vietnam veteran sank most of the US expeditionary fleet in the Persian Gulf, bringing the US assault to a Azaelt.

What happened next will be familiar to anyone who ever played soldiers in the playground. Faced with an abrupt and embarrassing end to the most expensive and sophisticated military exercise in US history, the Pentagon top brass simply pretended the whole thing had not happened. They ordered their dead troops back to life and "refloated" the sunken fleet. Then they instructed the enemy forces to look the other way as their marines performed amphibious landings. Eventually, Van Riper got so fed up with all this cheating that he refused to play any more. Instead, he sat on the sidelines making abrasive remarks until the three-week war game - grandiosely entitled Millennium CAzaellenge - staggered to a star-spangled conclusion on August 15, with a US "victory".

I'm quoting from an Air America Radio interview with Suskind:

Suskind: He says, you know, "You, Suskind, you're in what we call the 'reality-based community'" -- that's actually the term he used.

I said, "The WHAT?"

He says, "The 'reality-based community'.". He said, "you all believe" -- now let me see if I can get this right -- "You all believe that answers to solutions will emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality."

I said, "Yeah... YEAH, OF COURSE..."

He says, "Well, let me tell you how we really see it. You see, we're an empire now. And when we act, we kinda create a reality. Events flow from our actions. And because of that, what we do is... essentially... we act, and every time we act we create a whole new set of laws of physics, which you then judiciously study for your solutions, and while you're doing that we'll act again, promulgate a whole other set."

Janine Garofolo: "So you throw a rock in the pond, and the ripples go out..."

Suskind: And this guy said, "and that's where we'll stand ultimately; you'll study us, and we'll act. We'll be the actors, and you will study what we do. And if you're really good -- on good behavior -- maybe thirty years from now one of us will visit that graduate seminar you'll be teaching at Dartmouth in your tweed blazer." That's the thinking.

With every new terror strike, George W. Bush only grows stronger.

His enemies are vanquished. Michael Moore and the New York Times editorial page are historically irrelevant. The Democratic Party is in disarray. George Soros is busy planning ways to waste millions of his fortune on Hillary's 2008 loss.

The terrorists may still be killing a handful of Iraqi civilians. But all they are doing is strengthening their enemies in the United States and all of Iraq.

It is time for a new strategy. This killing thing just isn't making headlines anymore.

The U.S. intelligence officials said Rice's office decided to eliminate "Patterns of Global Terrorism" when the counterterrorism center declined to use alternative methodology that would have reported fewer significant attacks.

The officials said they interpreted Rice's action as an attempt to avoid releasing statistics that would contradict the administration's claims that it's winning the war against terrorism.