"One who excels at warfare first establishes himself in a position where he cannot be defeated while not losing the opportunity to defeat the enemy.

For this reason, the victorious army first realizes the conditions for victory, and then seeks to engage in battle. The vanquished army fights first, and then seeks victory."

- Sun Tzu, The Art of War, Chp. 3, Planning the Attack

Lessons heard but not learned for the Bush administration in its Iraq quagmire.

Rumsfeld (and the entire Administration - for that matter) are Incompetent Boob Heads

"You go to war with the army you have, not the army you want." - Donald Rumsfeld in response to a question concerning the lack of armour in Humvees to be used by troops heading out to Iraq.

What a fuckin' disingenous answer. Really. Because the guy is absolutely right, sort of.

What good old Rummy didn't mind to mention, however, is that that only applies during a war of necessity.

If you're attacked and have no choice but to respond immediately, you absolutely do not get the leisure of planning out your strategy, making sure you have sufficient arms, sufficient troops, robust logistical lines and all that. You go to war with what you have, just like Doolittle's raid in Tokyo or the entirety of World War II for that matter.

Ah, but in a war of choice, where you have the leisure of time and planning, you don't go to war with the army your have, you go to war with the army you want (or, at the very least, need) to get ALL of the job done.

After all is said and done, Iraq was not a war of necessity, it was (is) a war of choice.

That Rummy, his boss and all the other right wingers in the Administration could not even properly plan out their neat little white man's burden of a war speaks volumes of the incompetence brought about by the rigidity of their ideology. (Think of the new lighter, faster army.)

And American and Iraqi troops in the battlefield have been left to pay for their sins.

Tsunami Ramblings

"You don't get it do you? Civilization protects us from nature." State of Fear, Michael Chrichton.

The news just gets worse and worse everyday. Estimates started with 30T dead and has done nothing but rise for the entire week. (it's now at 150T and counting.)

A question was asked, as it inevitably would this Christmas season... (after all, it was December 26, the day after Christmas, a day when Christians commemorate the birth of Jesus Christ and the saving love of God.) The question was (no, it was not "why?" - a question that has undoubtedly been asked millions of times this week), rather it started with a trite observation:

God speaks to us through events. So what is God's message here? Is there even a message? How can something so seemingly senseless even have a message?

I don't know the answer but I do have my 0.02 cents and this is it:

We like to believe we're masters of the earth and its forces; as if our technology and science makes us immune from the ravages and caprices of nature.

However, as the tsunami has demonstrated to so many, we are not the masters of nature, nature is the master of us.

A brutal reminder to be sure but one we would be well advised to remember.