Let's get ready to rumble. The US and its serious allies (i.e. not France) are sending increasing numbers of ships and troops to the Persian Gulf, and should arrive there in mid-February. Bush's State of the Union speech is Jan 28th. As good a time as any to deliver an ultimatum.

Every now and then DEBKA is a fun read. It's sort of like the Israeli version of the Drudge Report, with lots of "exclusives" not found in other media, most likely because the sources can't be confirmed. But this seems like something Saddam would do. A defector claims that Saddam has a nuclear program - and it's conducted in tunnels under downtown Baghdad. So if the U.S. wants to destroy it, they'll have to bomb civilian targets.


Let's make believe that Canada is developing a rogue nuclear weapons program (no giggling). George W. Bush decides that he can't accept that, and he's going to send in the Stealth fighters to take it out. So, where's the secret lab? "We're 80% sure that it's in a tunnel underneath the West Edmonton Mall." Is 80% a high enough certainty to bomb a target like that? For that matter, what if you're 100% sure?

Interesting comment on corruption in North Korea, by "The Armed Liberal". I have to admit, I pretty much sign on with the view that North Korea is some strange foreign communist country-gulag, trapped in a 1950's Stalinist time warp. The only pictures we regularly see are either the DMZ or the gaudy miliary parades. The idea that American CIA agents can easily bribe North Korean border guards suggests that there's some discontent in the North. I'm still not sure I believe it myself, but it is worth remembering how quickly and bloodlessly communism evaporated in Eastern Europe - and how it caught everybody, experts included, by surprise.

Mark Steyn is almost always a great read. Today he opines on that debate that's raged over many a Tim Horton's coffee over the years ... that Canada, eventually, will become a part of the United States. His position: Why the heck would they want us? I'm in agreement with him. What Republican in his right mind is going to vote to add two Quebeckers to the U.S. Senate? Canadians have inconsistent views about their neighbors to south; they complain that the U.S. never pays attention to Canada, then simultaneously worry that America wants to "take over". Canada - a nation forever on the psychiatric couch.

This week's sign that the apocalypse is nigh. How long does it take the Earth to orbit around the Sun? Easy question, right? Half of Americans surveyed don't know the answer. And these people vote.

This is a bit of a distressing story. One things Canadians used to take pride in is that we were welcome in parts of the world where Americans weren't. We've heard the jokes, the first phrase an American learns when he travels abroad is "Don't shoot, I'm Canadian". Well, it looks like those days are over. Ottawa has taken the radical step of telling Hezbollah that they can't run fundraisers in Canada any more. The result of this has been a threat by the Lebanese ambassador, no less, that Muslims world-wide might just start "hating" Canadians. Sort of like a Middle Eastern mafia lieutenant shrugging his shoulders, "Hey, Canucks, I'm sorry, but suicide bombings happen every day, kapeesh?" This should serve as a good case study for the effectiveness of the "Whatever you do, don't make them mad at us" school of foreign policy.