The Panel Speaks

Report: Panel to advise U.S. pullback, no timetable

Big News and a big compromise, but will it be enough to appease the new legislature or the American public? (Or the World?) Will this be a recommendation that the president will be willing to swallow? Early indications suggest that he would be very reluctant to engage in such a plan.

Bush: No pullout from Iraq until 'mission is complete'

"There's one thing I'm not going to do, I'm not going to pull our troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete," he said in a speech setting the stage for high-stakes meetings with the Iraqi prime minister later this week. "We can accept nothing less than victory for our children and our grandchildren."-W

I'm beginning to believe there may actually be a possibility to get support from neighboring countries if the cards are played right. The problem has been all along that this administration has refused to talk to people who "disagree" with them. Alienating Iran, which was becoming more secular and democratic prior to the Iraq invasion, is nothing short of a disaster.

This Time article describes the debacle that has been U.S. foreign policy as of late.
The Five Fatal Mistakes of Bush's Mideast Policy

Whether any shreds of hope can be salvaged from this grim situation remains to be seen. There is a high probability that this could turn into a large scale regional battle which could have a domino effect across the entire globe. It is in our best interests, to try and make lemonade from this lemon, the future of not only the middle east, but much of Western Civilization may depend upon it.

MY LIFE
Work was a blast today. A little mishap caused me to end up staying late. A co-worker said to me that morning that it would be "one of those days" and as it turns out he was right on the money. There was a "Much ado about nothing" sort of hysteria in the air due to the up coming schedule of one of our large co-operative experiments. This on top of an already busy schedule sort of pissed me off.

The highlight of my day was ultimately making it over to Brookline to spend some quality time with Kate. She made some baked chicken which was nice and warm when I arrived. Additionally we had a garlic flavored rice pilaf, and some broccoli and cheese. I had stopped to pick up a loaf of Italian bread from Shaw's before heading over.

I ended up being a little late due to the turmoil in the lab, however, in the end I fared much better than I anticipated. After a mistake on one of my experiments, I had initially called Kate to cancel, but in an hour or so I recanted as I was only 40 minutes behind schedule, instead of the 2 hours that I anticipated.

Anyway, tomorrow is THURSDAY, which means the day after is FRIDAY... and we all know what that means!! THE WEEKEND!!! Yippee.