Tom, your're not alone. I don't get it either.

It's interesting. From a historical perspective, naturally there's plenty of public interest in WWII combat operations, and in intelligence operations, including code breaking, which has resulted in plenty of fine histories which have sold well and many have read.

But there's little public interest in the occupation and de-nazification, and while more than likely there are detailed histories of this, they were not widely read by a popular audience, or reviewed or debated to much degree by their authors. Thus it appears that no one knows whst worked, what went wrong, and without historical perspective, planning for Iraq proceeded without a "lessons learned". I'd put the historical offices on this now, if I had responsibility.

As much as I know about this was that "The Thin Man" did well at the box office, "Patton II" was a flop, the recovery of the Nazi rocket and arms tehnology went well, with many different teams headed by men with "initiative" and "authority", for lack of better words.

Probably most importantly, it ended up with the large expenditures of the Marshall Plan, which were ultimately repaid with joy.

I think Bush Jr should switch from fooling around with social security and move to medical liability reform, a better issue, particulalry better study and reportage systems for what goes wrong. It's not like doctors want to make serious mistakes. I've always also felt that minimum wage should be raised, with the raise going to employers buying catastrophic coverage from private sector firms. Minimally, perhaps minimium wage employers could encouraged to do this by tax incentives, I'm thinking here say 20 hours per week buys 50% coverage, so if a person worked 2 jobs they'd be covered fully, where the worker gets to choose insurance company. NO new administrative costs.

Risking being called "anti-semetic" yet again, my thinking has been that since W. Bush is putting pressure on Israel's fanatic settler faction he was going to get trashed (here there is historical precedent for recent Presidents), and it looks like things are running pretty much as I expected.