Separated at birth?

The photo on the left is of Peter Boyle as “The Creature” in Young Frankenstein. The picture on the right is of Peter Arnett as The Creature in Baghdad. Explains a lot of the senseless noises, doesn’t it?

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Internet connection problems persist. I’m not able to post reliably, or switch to DSL fast enough.

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Busy weekend, late night. Catching up now.

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Allen Prather has the best readers. Safe for work — but just barely.

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Pejman is finally moving off Blogspot.

Now will someone with more HTML knowhow than I please go over there and help the man do some coding?

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Looks like a pretty slow news day, it’s the weekend, and we have to work on the house.

So I’ll keep an ear on the TV, but posting will be slow or nonexistant. Read The Command Post.

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Attention all Randroids: Arthur Silber has your number.

(For those wondering what a Randroid is, as opposed to a SOLO, read this post.)

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If you think I’m going to comment on this picture Ed Lambert sent me, you’re nuts.

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Eugene Volokh responds to the Trenton yellow-ribbon silliness.

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Keith Olbermann is going back to MSNBC:

Keith Olbermann is out to prove that F. Scott Fitzgerald was wrong when he famously opined that there are no second acts in American lives.

Olbermann’s second act at MSNBC is set to begin today as the network is expected to announce that the newsman has been tapped to host a nightly 8 p.m. series, “Countdown With Keith Olbermann,” set to premiere Monday.

Keith, MSNBC just ain’t the place for you — and Craig Kilborne desperately needs someone to verbally bitchslap him on The Late Late Show. Think he’s hiring?

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Yes, I’m still posting breaking news and headlines at The Command Post.

Go there.

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“Mea Culpa” is a semi-regular feature here on VodkaPundit, as I look over the archives and realize I was drop-dead wrong about something.

Up until this weekend, I was proudly part of the Rumsfeld Camp, confident in the belief that we could win in Iraq with the equivalent of two reinforced heavy divisions (that doesn’t include Air Force wings, Special Forces, support troops, etc.) Just two reinforced combat divisions. American know-how, airpower, and Iraqi weakness would take care of the rest.

I wargamed all the likely scenarios. I fiddled with the parameters. I looked at it from every angle I could think of. And I got it exactly wrong.

Can we win with no more than the forces on the ground? You bet we can — but not in the 7-10 days I figured it would take, and not without pushing our troops unforgivably and needlessly hard. Our 3rd Infantry Division, our marines, the Brits, they’ve all been in constant contact with the enemy for nine days running. Soldiers in battle need a rest. They need relief. And there’s none coming for another ten days.

I was wrong. More importantly, so was otherwise-excellent Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. He’s shown great courage, canceling purchases like the cool-but-unneeded M109 Crusader artillery program. But for all the courage he’s shown, he’s asking our troops to show too much.

They will endure, they will win. But at a price in time and effort and blood that didn’t have to be so high.

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Reader Eric Green emails to let you know that Victor Davis Hanson will be speaking today at Ashland University in Ohio — and you can listen to a him on this live internet feed.

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Speaking of the Brits, James Joyner sums up the Bush/Blair “rift” over postwar Iraq perfectly:

WaPo breaks the news that, even though Bush and Blair are steadfastly in support of the same war aims, they have somewhat different world views. Really? One would think a Scotland-born British leftist who has been in politics his entire adult life would think exactly like a Texas conservative who just entered politics a few years ago. What gives?

Rightie-o, pardner. Why, Bush’n'Blair go together like stout and apple pie.

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While UK troops bleed and die for a cause only partially their own, I’d like to post again a few words I wrote when this site was three weeks old. Here they are:

VodkaPundit unashamedly calls England “the Mother Country.” Most of my forefathers got their asses kicked by Brits at one time or another; hell, some of us got kicked out of England herself — literally 86ed from an entire country. And yet I hold no grudge against the UK, even though I’m famous for doing so for even the slightest slight.

Why?

I could pay the usual lip service in thanks to England for inventing modern individual liberty, but that’s not it. Not all of it, anyway. I think, instead, the most important thing we mongrel Americans have kept from our pasty-white cousins is character. That same Jack Bull stubbornness which produced the Magna Carta; that created, endured, then got rid of Oliver Cromwell; that made for such hearty pioneers who first dared tame North America; that stood up to Napoleon when no one else would; that lost an entire generation of young men rather than see the Continent under the Kaiser’s fist; that survived the Blitz, and that lost an Empire while keeping a stiff upper lip.

These are the reasons I love the Britons. Except for one more.

In the last eighty years, the Brits have watched their upstart younger cousins here first grow as strong, then far stronger, than themselves. The French sneered at us for it. The Germans did worse. And everyone else resented us, at best. But not the Brits. Through every crisis from the Berlin Airlift to the Present Mess, they have stood with us shoulder to shoulder — even when their elites told them not to. And it is that strength of character we inherited from them which will allow us to prevail in the new global war.

Thank you, Britain.

And today, specific thanks to those men of the Desert Rats fighting near and in Basra.

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Matt Traylor has today’s Required Viewing.

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This contest is, honest to Whomever, being run by the BBC.

My entry was, “THIS is how big a Subway sandwich should be.”

Uh, they have Subways in London, right? I mean, other than The Tube.

Thanks to the only partially inebriated Tim Blair for the great find.

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The United Nations was forged in the waning months of World War II, largely due to the will of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. It was made up of the

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Yeah, I’m back at work. Some fun bitching about the United Nations in just a bit.

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Moving bookshelves isn’t fun. Moving books is worse.

You’d think I’d have figured out that second part before I got’em all stacked.

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Forwarded from work by my bride.

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An open letter to Scott Ritter.

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Jeralyn Merritt has all the links you need to read about The Professor’s Patriot Act II debate.

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Holy foaming facial orifices, Batty-man! Eric Alterman is playing in the deep end without his water wings today. Read:

Did anybody vote for this insanely optimistic and unlikely agenda? Are even a tiny percentage of Americans aware of it? How, for goodness sakes, can even those liberals who would like to see these things take place

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The second Rocky Mountain Blogger Bash is on. Bloggers, groupies, protesters, and dancing girls are all invited.

Denver. April 11. Wyncoop Brewery.

Be there, or be somewhere else.

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Venomous Kate (who gets a belated addition to the blogroll under “The Usual”) offers a handy list of war links called “War College.”

Give her a click and look to the top left corner of her site.

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Mean Mr. Mustard has a new superhero the post-modern age. . .

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