Look, there is so much ammunition

I can understand wearing a Ronald Reagan mask to rob a Bank of America, but why the cape?

Improbable government announcement of the day, from the White House deputy press secretary: “President Bush was saddened to learn of the passing of Egypt’s Nobel Prize Laureate in Literature, Naguib Mahfouz.”

The three major Russian “opposition” parties merge, because Putin tells them to. They will compete with Putin’s United Russia party as to who can most slavishly implement Putin’s policies. Really, that’s what the head of the Party of Life party said.

Must-read: WaPo article on how Shiite militias dominate Iraq’s Health Ministry, especially its 15,000-strong “security” force (of 30,000 total employees), and periodically drag Sunnis out of their beds and kill them. In the US, this is called “managed care.”

Harper’s has some phrases from a web page, “Military English Learning” on the website of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army:

The principles of war can never be changed.

Special forces can penetrate into an enemy’s rear to gather information.

Without military maps, you don’t know where you are sometimes.

It is necessary for war fighters to master the skills of temporary fixations.

There have been too many famous battles.

Look, there is so much ammunition.

Oh, so many weapons. Great!

The weapons displayed here are almost conventional weapons.

These are tanks, aren’t they?

Yes. But this one is an armored vehicle.

We saw this kind of missile on TV.

As far as we know, there are atomic weapons.

Mass-destruction weapons bring more difficulties to the first aid.

Theoretically, space must be digitized.

Cyber-war techniques can be treated as weapons of mass destruction.

Do you know the most terrorist event?

It was the September 11 attack in New York.

Thousands of people died unnatural deaths.

The World Trade Center can never be mended.

Bin Laden immediately became the most famous person of the world.

Has he been dead or still alive?

No one knows, I’m afraid, except himself.

The original pages have been scrubbed from the PLA site, but some cached versions may be found here. The page of useful phrases for the interrogation of POWs includes these:

92. What do you hope now?

102. How is the morale of your unit?

103. Where is your vanguard?

104. Do you know our lenient policy towards POWs?

105. The chief criminals shall be punished without fail.

106. Those who are accomplice under duress shall go unpunished.

107. Those who perform deeds of merit shall be rewarded.