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I have not finished Imperian Grunts. Although I find it very interesting, it is not a page-turner (or maybe it is dense with new information.)

I think it is very wrong and mostly self-aggrandizing on the part of the press to keep arguing that perception is reality. Furthermore, usually, the "world opionion" that I see cited is usually a creation of the BBC.

Journalists sometimes say that they are the first draft of history. I saw a historian on c-span once who said that if you go to the WWII musueums at Normandy and look at the newspaper coverage, you will see that the reports were all wrong. This comes from having a narrow. today, focus that does not lend itself to analysis. Journalists is spend too much time pretending that they can predict the future. Only when the story is over can objective analysts go back and sort how the end result came about.

World opinion, such as it is, has about as much impact on what will now happen on the ground in S. Lebanon as it has on whether the volcano will explode in the Phillippines. That is none, and that is as it should be.

All my life, 65% of the American p0opulation has not been able to say on any given day who the veep is, as Jay Leno frequently demonstrates.

Citations of world opinion are fatuous propaganda, imho. Most of the people in the world are not only not engaged, but they are limited both by their access to information but also by the inability to think logically and critically

Surely, the aura of quick invincibility of the IDF has been damaged by the seeming indecisiveness. However, right now there is no way Hamas escapes alive, save by mercy of Israel. We will see. Casey yesterday said war is action, reaction,counteraction meaning that those who think some magic plan is needed don't understand the adaptability of enemies fighting for their lives and for hearth and home. Those who think that pictures of children in newspapers in other countries are important forget that Israeli fathers are fighting for their own families and homes, not just watching something on TV.

Finally, I think all this high level international posturing at the UN and international media coverage may actually do a lot of harm by tieing the hands of a country's leaders. imho we have helped emasulate Europe with our security umbrella and may have done the same to Israel.

I am not attracted by the title of Fiasco, though I will look at it when I get a chance. I did notice that it is #1, but I also saw that Freakonomics is #3. While part of the later was interesting, most of it was just partisan junk.