Apparently Wesley Clark has had it with the proxy war being waged on John Kerry’s military record by Karen Hughes, Dick Cheney, and others (on behalf of the President, who certainly doesn’t have the guts to smear Kerry himself on this issue).

The Army has requested that two ski resorts that had leased 105mm howitzers for avalanche control purposes return the guns so that they can be shipped overseas to use in Iraq or Afghanistan. This article is interesting to me because I would have never thought that at this point, we’d be suffering from a shortage of artillery in Iraq or Afghanistan. You don’t need artillery for peacekeeping. (I’m assuming the Army isn’t going to use the guns for avalanche control in the Hindu Kush.)

Is there a better example of a bikeshed discussion than the design of a new national flag?

Karen Hughes was busy on CNN yesterday attacking John Kerry for things he said 30 years ago. This from the loyal retainer of a man who dismisses everything he did before age 40 as “youthful indiscretion,” and who was probably saying things like, “Should we go out and buy a couple more six packs before the convenience stores close?” back then. Politics is politics, but I quake at the temerity of Republicans who want to compare their candidate’s lifestyle in his early twenties to that of Kerry.

One popular security question used to confirm the identity of a person making a request is, “What is your mother’s maiden name?” Well Brad Graham points out that using Google, you can find that information for many people on genealogy sites. He discusses this in the context of retrieving other people’s passwords to their Gmail accounts, but it’s just as true for your credit card or anything else. The Gmail case is particularly egregious because you generally don’t tell other people your credit card numbers, but you do tell them your email address.

A reader sent me this video from a documentary that features US soldiers confronting looters in Iraq (it’s a Windows Media video clip). After watching it, I was kind of torn between crying and throwing up. I’d tell you what happens, but I don’t want to spoil it for you. And this is what goes on when a film crew is on the scene documenting the behavior for posterity.

Anyone think this was the best $200 a spammer ever spent?

Fred Kaplan reports that President Bush is spending more on nuclear weapons than Ronald Reagan ever did. And that number doesn’t include the massive amounts of cash that we’re throwing away on a missile defense system that won’t really protect us from anything. In the meantime, requests for the money we must have to continue the mission in Iraq are being postponed until after the election to avoid bad press. Someone needs to take away the credit card.

In 2002, an NFL player named Pat Tillman made big news when he turned down a contract worth millions and left professional football to join the US Army along with his brother. He went to Ranger school and served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and was killed in action on the hunt for the Taliban. In the context of this story, I find the Pentagon’s refusal to make public the photos of the flag draped coffins of slain soldiers to be disgusting and cowardly. If Americans who see those photos feel like the sacrifice made by these soldiers is in vain, it’s not the photos that are the problem.

So, the news today is that the new Iraq government that we’re going to turn “sovereignty” over to at the end of June will have no legislative powers. Oh, and it won’t have any meaningful executive powers either, being that not only will it not command US forces in Iraq, but it won’t command Iraqi forces either. No word on judicial powers.