It’s A Wrap

As the Year of the Fire Dog prepares to trot off, wagging its oblivious tail and bearing its friendly, sloppy grin for another twelve year jaunt through the cosmos, I am making a note to leave 2018 open. Should I be graced with life the next time a Year of the Dog comes bounding into view, I believe I’ll find it far more bearable with nothing too important on the schedule, as opposed to this waning year, when I’ve been stymied at every turn. So, goodbye Dog, and good luck.

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The Man In The Mirror

The Baker-Hamilton Commission, more popularly known, perhaps, as the Iraq Study Group, released Wednesday its report on what outgoing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld once famously called “our adventure in Iraq.” At present, others might call it a civil war, a quagmire, a complex situation, or any number of other, less charitable things, but the commission’s statement for the record (available in 160 softbound pages for $6.57 at Amazon) called it “grave and deteriorating,” near-chaos, something on the precipice of “humanitarian catastrophe.”

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