You know, I don’t worry all that much, frankly. ... I’ve got peace of mind.

Bush: “I spend most of my time worrying about people losing their lives in Iraq, both Americans and Iraqis”. But, “You know, I don’t worry all that much, frankly. ... I’ve got peace of mind.”

Which piece?

I could have gone so many different directions with that: references to peas, the peace that passeth all understanding, etc etc. Seriously, dude, you’ve gotta give us more challenging straight lines than “I’ve got peace of mind.” The American people expect better — nay, they deserve better.

Nay?

So before the US sent Canadian (and Syrian) citizen Maher Arar to Syria to be tortured in 2002, they offered to return him to Canada if it promised to arrest him and put him in jail. Canada responded that it had no grounds to do so, and you’re not the boss of me, and so off Arar went for a year of hell. Bill Graham, then foreign minister, now defense minister, apologized — boy, Canada is not America — to Arar for not getting him out of Syria earlier.

The Latvian parliament ignores the French and the Dutch and votes 71-5, with 24 abstentions, to ratify the EU constitution. An earlier attempt was aborted when it turned out to be a really bad translation, with hundreds of mistakes.

3 years ago (Feb. 2002), after 6 Israeli soldiers were ambushed and killed, the Israeli government ordered a revenge operation to kill unarmed Palestinian cops, preferably at least 6 of them (12 were, plus 3 other people) according to 2 of the soldiers who took part in those missions. The Israeli army responded today by claiming that the cops, who manned checkpoints, had let terrorists pass through them. So it was good revenge, not bad revenge. Either way, that’s not what the 2 soldiers say; they say it was pure tit for tat.

Izvestia is in the process of being bought by the state gas company. Having taken over all Russian tv, Putin is now trying to neutralize the print media.

Responding to less than complimentary statements by Dick Cheney about North Korea, NK responds: “Cheney is hated as the most cruel monster and blood-thirsty beast as he has drenched various parts of the world in blood.”

And your point is?