Donald Ducks the Question

This afternoon, I caught CNN running the spectacle of U.S. troops grilling Donald Rumsfeld on the dearth of adequate equipment and stop-loss policies. Good for them, I thought. I'm sure they'd like to hear a little less about freedom marching on, and a little more about armored vehicles rolling in. And look, I know that Rumsfeld was put on the spot (did he really not see this coming?) and he's not the most eloquent cabinet member, but when a soldier complains that he's dumpster-diving for scrap metal to armor his vehicles, it's just really not cool to reply "If you think about it, you can have all the armor in the world on a tank and a tank can be blown up."

Because, you know, I suspect that the soldiers have probably thought about it—tanks blowing up, that is. They didn't ask for a magic force field or immortality. These poor guys are jumping out of planes and asking for a parachute. Yeah, they can fail, but it would be kind of nice to have one.

On an entirely unrelated note.

I took out my passport tonight in anticipation of upcoming travel, to make sure I had a valid visa and so forth. I opened it up and was mighty glad I'd taken the time to have a peek. Because there was a big yellow Post-It note covering my information page, on which my sister (showing off her new language skills from class) had written my name in Arabic. I can just imagine sauntering up to the ticket counter, handing over my passport, and watching the attendant's face morph into red alert as she sees a post-it note covered in Arabic. "Why no ma'am! I actually don't know why that's there! Um. ...I'm so getting my bags searched, aren't I?"