Color-coded chaos

Gee, maybe my company should start judging our activities on color-coded sliding scales. Regardless of how you measure it, though, we're all doing better than the US Military:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/01/world/middleeast/01military.html?ex=1320037200&en=62235052af3eb067&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

And then, from the Washington Post, we have Tony Snow: "You can't say, I support the troops, but I hate the cause, because that's why they signed up. And you've got men and women who are risking their lives for what they consider a noble cause, which is not only defeating al-Qaeda and defeating terrorists abroad, but also creating conditions that are going to allow people in that part of the world to brush aside terror as an unnecessary distraction to building a better life through free and democratic society."

I'm barely going to give a moment's credence to the first half of that quote, because it's so blatantly ridiculous. You've got men and women who signed up years ago, are stuck in the military on a stop-loss order, and others who signed up because they needed work (thanks to the contraction of the economy), or help paying for tuition (due to the recent increases far in excess of inflation). There are some very noble soldiers out there, but arguing that a military fights only for the "cause" is naive and silly.

But let's get to the meat of the matter. In what world do we consider terrorism an "unnecessary distraction"? Is that what the military might of America has been deployed to do? Counter "unnecessary distractions"? I'd like to see certain members of the Administration "brush aside" an IED. Or maybe a landmine.

What will be the next "distraction" we go after? I shudder to think.

Also, this is unrelated, from the Washington Post today:

"In recent days, Bush has said Social Security remains one of the 'big items' he wants to tackle next year and he continues to 'believe that a worker, at his or her option, ought to be allowed to put some of their own money . . . in a private savings account, an account that they call their own.'"

Um, has anyone noticed that we already have a system like this? It's called banking.