America On Drugs

Good Morning. Several new items today, and the caffeine hasn't yet kicked in.

• David Murray, a drug policy analyst for the Bush administration, was asked recently about cocaine cultivation in Colombia, where the United States is fighting an expensive, low-grade war against coca growers since 2000. “This is a trade whose days are numbered,” Murray told The New York Times. The phrase rang of Vice President Dick Cheney’s evaluation of the Iraqi civil war in May 2005: “I think they’re in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency.” Someone should find out what these Bush types are, if you will, smoking: Pierre's Tuesday column is an analysis of the American way of losing wars--the war in Iraq, in Afghanistan, on terror, on drugs--all of which ensure that, when admitting defeat is not an option, defeat becomes the only certainty. See America On Drugs...
  

• President Bush's news conference on Monday was a classic case of gunboat diplomacy gone stale on the shoals of electoral desperation. See the recap here...
  

• From Candide's Notebooks contributor William C. Hall, here's "A Short History of American Warfare."

As always, thanks for reading, and check the Notebooks' Front Page for the latest...pt