Your article suggests that Senator Joe Biden has become aware that his frankness may be used against him, but he is still not afraid to be frank (and witty) within a pack, in both parties, which displays such qualities only at the far extremes. Senator Biden has the advantage of being mainstream and experienced.

He would be my first choice for President in 2008.

. . . is what we make up after the events. It can never be complete. We may hope to get the facts straight. But gaps will remain. And there will always be a point of view -- albeit, sometimes unintentional. And, yes, hundreds of millions of points of view, if we are talking about World War II.

From what I've seen of "The War," it seems pretty laid back, with not nearly the drive of "The World at War." It is a documentary effort of and about how Americans viewed "the war." It attempts to convey the tremendous insularity, ignorance but also idealism of Americans. Most civilized men are not easily murderers, and that is why most of them did not talk about what they had seen and done. It used to be a pretty good gauge of character, how much or how little people spoke about the most brutal aspects of this subject. The professionals knew what had to be done; the draftees did not. And then, of course, there are always the psychopaths. A lot of the touted heroes come from their ranks.

And after the fact, came the "chicken hawks."

A group of them took over America in recent years.

No one can be prevented from making analogies with "the war on terror," I'm afraid.

At the end of this long thread, given the failures of logic, the left out words, the flawed spellings and composition, it appears almost as if some of the posters have given into fatigue, amnesia, drink, or dope.

Rather like what affects those who have taken part in "the war," whatever war that is.

In all of these articles and discussions, I have not seen much reference to a curious fact.

On March 13, 2008, four days before St. Patrick of Washington smiled on the the Bear's Stern, it was Carlyle Capital, located for convenience on Isle of Guernsey, the Channel Islands, that went down hard for a sum uncertainly "over sixteen billion dollars." This hedge fund, related to the larger Carlyle Group, which has handled Bush Family ventures for decades, was unable to quite close a deal with Wall Street firms to advance a further half a billion dollars in operating capital to meet its obligations. Among the firms which had been holding Carlyle's head above water was Bear Sterns.

According to the Washington Post, David Rubenstein, one of Carlyle Capital's founders ". . . said the firm planned to talk with investors in Carlyle Capital to explain what happened; it would also try to do something to soften the loss, though Rubenstein did not specify what the firm would do."

Then, a few days later, the Fed came to the rescue, the first of what will probably become a series of dramatic financial rescues.

For many of us (where I live), it will mean living eventually in a cardboard box on O'Farrell Street. For the Bush Family, if things get really tough, there is still that vast, undeveloped estate acquired in Paraguay. George W. Bush's Grandfather, Prescott Bush, had friends down there, who found the country . . . sheltering.

Why is it that that there so often seems to be a Bush Connection? Whether it be Bernays, Freud, Goebbels, PR, Eugenics, Nazism, Bananas, "the Free Market," or "Operation Iraqi Freedom."

Chiquita Banana knows.

We should not forget the deep nexus of Nazi collaborator Prescott Bush (later "a founder of USO" and U.S. Senator), with such ventures as United Bank of Boston, The Eurasian Trust, and United Fruit. With money given to him from the eventual sale of United Bank holdings in Nazi Europe by his father Senator Prescott Bush, George H.W. Bush was able command a considerable share in United Fruit, and to fund outfits with such raffish names as Apache Oil and Zapata Oil, not to mention aiding various intelligence activities in the Caribbean. Given his background, it was an easy step to a rise in the ranks and eventual directorship of, the CIA.

Some of those profits and connections no doubt helped Our President George W. Bush along the way.

If we will remember, according to reports submitted to the 9/11 Commission, several of the 19 Muslim terrorists who set us off on our eight year trillion(s) of dollars fearful and bloody wild goose chase of Osama bin Ladin were under Federal surveillance. Had the FBI or another security agency brought them in, say in August of 2001, would they have been dismissed as groups of nuts without any serious capacity to do harm?

For a number of decades, we have indeed been living our national life in a corridor of distorted mirrors.

[Macresarf1]

FYI, Stefan Droessler, curator of the Munich Film Museum, producer/editor of the new German version of LOLA MONTEZ, has created a handsome, illustrated, paperback souvenir programme, which makes a quite detailed comparison of the various editions. For those who have not seen the German edit of LOLA MONTEZ, the film is extremely beautiful and faithful to what Droessler believes were Max Ophul's intentions.

I recommend that those interested contact Droessler at the Munich Film Museum.

[One is amazed that there are commentators here who have never heard of Ophuls!]

[ Macresarf1]