Today's more or less random thoughts...

• I got back from Sophia Antipolis (France) yesterday. At the airport in Nice, there is a plaque commemorating 6 American paratroopers who gave their lives liberating the airport from the Nazis.
  
  That was when people understood that war meant sacrifice, that you don't get on soapboxes and holler for "liberating" countries unless you, personally, were prepared to sacrifice.
  
  
• The war in Iraq is more than a little problem. On the plane back, I read articles in the Economist and Harper's on Iraq. The wholly odd thing about the debate now is an almost complete absence of honest discussion in the media as to why we're there: we're there to have control over a supply of oil. One can make a case that control over the vast amounts of Iraqi oil should not "fall into the wrong hands," but I think a better case can be made that it's better to be independent of such a massive amount of oil in the first place. Blumenthal's right, though, the propaganda's not working, and that's because the petroleum elephant in the dining room is really the reason why we're there, only the Bushies can't admit it. It sounds too much like "blood for oil."