Partly tongue in cheek, regarding all the super-sophisticated stuff which gets hyped -

Where is Osama - "He can hide but he can't run!" - bin Laden? O - "Wanted dead or alive!" - BL?

Where did those anthrax letters come from? Who made the anthrax?

Don't knock the "smart" bombs! They absolutely wasted 83.624% of the decoys against which they were launched. Only 24% of the sheet plastic bridges, though. Did get 100% of the Chinese Embassys.

These things are good in their own way. And, they ain't what they say. Remember the Patriot anti-missile, the one where GHWB visited the Raytheon plant to commend the workers? In the cold light of day, it seems it didn't hit a thing. Scuds stage, look as if they're falling apart, and the warhead wanders off sort of in the direction in which it was launched. That's what they do, that's what they did even after the Patriots were supposedly hitting them. Was a PR gimmick to keep the Israelis out of the war, make 'em think something was being done for them.

Remember the "smart" bombs. Swartzkopf with his green video displays? Terrible accuracy, but very expensive. The public did see a sophisticated PR effort showing those that may have worked, and that's it.

I think it would be great if these things worked a third as well as claimed. But ya can't believe the hype, which comes out in a lot of ways - press releases from the military, position papers from think tanks, revelations from manufacturers, columns from favored reporters, novels from independent writers, "Popular Science" articles, posts signed "Bowser", and so on.

After all, even if they find OBL this morning, he's been gone a long time. Even if they find the anthrax badguys today, it's not a real good thing for the world to know we couldn't find 'em for this long.

The stuff is good, sometimes. Not always.

And another note. The pregnancies which come about from what Rumsfeld might do to you always result in attorneys. Now, you might want that, I don't know.

Arf