Coulda, shoulda, woulda...sure. Pathetic. Now he wants to follow the crew of lunatics and morons that launched the Iraq war over the falls.

The pro-war gang talk up the differences between Iraq and Viet Nam. But the main basis for comparison has nothing to do with those countries. It is about the similarities between the politicians and generals who gave us the debacle in S.E. Asia and the current crop of same who have delivered a debacle in the Middle East. The result is the same because like that war, this one, was based on lies, delusions and ignorance.

One similarity does exist between the two societies. Iraq, like Viet Nam, is filled with people who will never stop fighting a foreign invader. The most popular politician in Iraq, al-Sadr, is now retooling his militia to be a covert force of resistance.

BTW the Viet Nam war did not end in Paris in 1973. It ended in 1975 with people clinging to helicopter struts taking off from our embassy roof, and then sailors pushing those helicopters off the aircraft carriers into the China Sea to make room for more. It ended for the US then. Really it went on for a few more years since the mess we'd created had spilled into Laos and Cambodia, and the Vietnamese had to invade Cambodia to get rid of Pol Pot.

Cheers to Patrick Smith. His article gets at the lunacy of the TSA system. The whole thing is a moronic invention of a horde of dead-ass bureaucrats who don't know how to protect anything except their pensions and their posteriors. Everytime I get near security I get angry. Clowns who couldn't hold a job at Wal-mart looking for "terrorists" - once they pulled me out of line for extra attention, and dumpy guy poked my hip bone and asked me, "What's that?"

"My hip bone," I said, "Am I allowed to bring that?"

"I don't know," he muttered as he walked away.

What's really depressing to contemplate is that the whole stupid dog and pony show will go on forever. It reassures the idiots.

You know how to make the US instantly safer? Get US troops out of the Middle East now.