Tuesday

We went to the beach.

5 rounds of:
Clean 50lb. dumbbell, followed by a throw. Did this for about 25 yards 5 times. 15 pushups at the end of each round. Took about 4 minutes.

Overhead lunges with the 50lb. dumbbell
short sprint
Overhead lunges back.

3 rounds of sprints.

Great workout.

He is right when he says, "To fight a long war, the president has to ensure he can preserve public and congressional support for the effort. It is not an overstatement to say that the president's shift in rhetoric nearly cost the U.S. the war. Victory or defeat can hinge on the president's words as much as on the military plans of his generals or the actions of their troops on the ground."

He had the congress and a good portion of the people of the United States behind him when he invaded. I myself thought it foolish, but once again, nobody listened to me. That's why I scoff at current critics, politicians, newspapers, etc. Hey, even if you didn't support the war in the beginning, what did you do to stop it? MAybe you should have yelled just a bit louder?

They never planned for what to do after taking the country. Or at least it didn't show. LEt's say there had been nuclear weapons. We found them. Great. That wouldn't change the current situation in Iraq. It might lend our country more credibility, but there would still be chaos in Iraq.

Why this article is important is because of the last passage I pasted above. Go read The Best and the Brightest as well as War in a Time of Peace, both by Halberstam as well as Truman, which I will bring you Sunday. Foreign policy is merely a reflection of our domestic policy. This idea that the two are separate, that a President such as Clinton or Bush can be a "Domestic" policy President or a "Foreign" policy President is a myth and woe to the voter that casts their ballot thinking they are voting for a President based on the candidate's strength in one field or another.

The President successfully sold the US into war. He never carried it. It's not enough to get into the war, you have to sell it all the way. This has always been the case and has always been a problem for Lincoln, Roosevelt, Truman, Johnson, Clinton and Bush. I know this. Unfortunately, I'm one of the few people who sits down to read thousand page biographies and other really long books with few pictures and no bags of candy attached to them.