Ahh Saturday

A great piece in The Weekly Standard from Christopher Hitchens saying what the Bush administration should be telling the american people about the war.A must read.

"LET ME BEGIN WITH A simple sentence that, even as I write it, appears less than Swiftian in the modesty of its proposal: "Prison conditions at Abu Ghraib have improved markedly and dramatically since the arrival of Coalition troops in Baghdad."
I could undertake to defend that statement against any member of Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International, and I know in advance that none of them could challenge it, let alone negate it. Before March 2003, Abu Ghraib was an abattoir, a torture chamber, and a concentration camp. Now, and not without reason, it is an international byword for Yankee imperialism and sadism. Yet the improvement is still, unarguably, the difference between night and day. How is it possible that the advocates of a post-Saddam Iraq have been placed on the defensive in this manner? And where should one begin?"

Update: And don't miss Roger L.Simon's posts on his trip to Japan, great pictures and some history.I am a lover of and heavily influenced by Japanese craftsmanship and art. Their masters of the ancient arts are the very finest as this woodworker can attest to the quality and beauty of their work from their tools to their products.