Tasty Holiday Follow-Ups

The Opposite of War. My panoscopy turned out to be the opposite of the Iraq War. The Iraq War had such an easy build up that it's still hard to believe what a grinder it's become. To the contrary, my panoscopy prep was pretty tough. Unable to eat or drink anything after midnight, I had such bad indigestion that I only slept for an hour before I had to go to the hospital. After I got into the surgery room everything was easy. After being told to breathe through my nose, I took four or five breaths and woke up 90 minutes later in the recovery room. If only the Bush administration had been as well prepared for the Iraq War as my medical team was for my procedure.

Old-Looking Oden. I'm not the only one who notices how old Greg Oden looks. Sports writer Jerry Tipton of the Lexington (KY) Herald-Leader notes in a parenthetical comment that Oden "looks like he's 30." Tipton further observes that freshman basketball players generally seem more mature these days because of AAU basketball and the extensive travelling of high school teams. The same could be said of college athletes in general. Because sports are much more intense and grueling than they used to be, the wear and tear shows.

Killing the Surge. The chances that an increase in American troops would help the situation in Iraq were always minimum at best. By putting off the decision until sometime in January, President Bush has reduced that chance even further. As a result of the delay, Bush lost any element of surprise and the new American troops and their officers will half expect to be useless once they arrive in Baghdad, an expectation which they'll share with the Iraq Study Group, most of the military establishment, and American public opinion. Even Jerry Ford is speaking out against the war in death.