America Giveth, America Taketh Away

Herbert: "Although it has been lowering standards, raising bonuses and all but begging on its knees, the Army hasn't reached its recruitment quota in months. There are always plenty of hawks in America. But the hawks want their wars fought with other people's children." The war in Iraq was sold to the American public the way a cheap car salesman sells a lemon. Dick Cheney assured the nation that Americans in Iraq would be "greeted as liberators." Kenneth Adelman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board said the war would be a "cakewalk." And Donald Rumsfeld said on National Public Radio: "I can't say if the use of force would last five days or five weeks or five months, but it certainly isn't going to last any longer than that."

"The problem now is that most Americans have had plenty of time to digest the images of people being blown up in Baghdad and mutilated in Fallujah, and they know that thousands of our troops are coming home in coffins, or without their arms, or without their legs, or paralyzed, or horribly burned." [NYT]

Krugman on China: "The more important difference from Japan's investment is that China, unlike Japan, really does seem to be emerging as America's strategic rival and a competitor for scarce resources - which makes last week's other big Chinese offer more than just a business proposition." [NYT]

Let's let everyone that has or will get AIDS die...that's the message that Bush is sending. "American law already forbids United States money from financing needle exchange programs. For Washington to decide that it wants to stop everyone else from doing that as well is a breathtakingly dangerous step." [AIDS]

Global warming is just "junk science", right? "And it terrifies the White House because it is further proof that the administration's efforts to minimize the warming threat have failed and that President Bush's voluntary approach to the problem is no longer taken seriously." [Global Warming]