I'm very busy at work right now, but have a pile of stories I want to bring to your attention. In no particular order:

Military Coup, American-Style talks about how the US military's increasing budget is causing it to wield increasing influence over our foreign policy and political agenda. And you thought Wesley's Clarks' rumored candidacy for the 04 Democrat nomination was just an oddball random event... Reeves is a provocative writer and a good thinker so bookmark this link to read all his columns.

Evil is Router in Iraq, but will it return? Thomas Friedman is an unusual columnist, in that the seems able to climb above the ground-level perspective that most columnists and newsman seem to take and look at the War from a broader perspective.  Like me, he has called Gulf War II the right war, fought the wrong way, and argues that no peace will be possible until we address the Arab-Israeli conflict head on and give the Palestinian their own state with all of the West bank and East Jerusalem in exchange for peace.  Although he deplores the Palestinian terror tactics, he equally rejects the Israeli Gestapo tactics. 

The Uneasy Conqueror. Maureen Dowd gives a brief history of empire and argues that "America is an empire that dare not speak it's name."  She quotes Niall Ferguson, the Oxford professor who wrote "Empire", saying America is so invested in its "creation myth," breaking away from a wicked empire, that Americans will always be self deceiving - and even self-defeating - imperialists.  the Bushies no this, which is the reason they fought this war based on the chimera of the WMD, but in reality just look at the contracts being handed out to Haliburton and other's and you just know we won't be leaving Iraq anytime soon....

Apple Gets it Right. Apple's New online music stores service is the first to not criminalize the customer from the get-go.  It also is an economic model that kinda makes sense.  Now all they have to do it make it available to windows and Unix users....Oh, I just know some open source coder will get to work on that right away.

6:09:01 PM