Nixon and Kissinger as Mad Men, Hamburger Hill, Chaos

From wired.com, a story about how Nixon and Kissinger acted like mad men to change the course of history. Short take: lets load up a bunch of B-52's with nuclear weapons and send them towards Moscow so that the Soviets and the North Vietnamese will believe that the leaders in the US are mad enough to do such a thing and that they had better immediately race to the peace tables in Paris and beg for some kind of settlement to end the war in Vietnam, or at least get the Soviets to stop sending arms that way. Didn't work then though I would say it has a chance of working now, at least the first part, the part that leads people to believe that Nixon and Kissinger were crazy.

Referenced in the above article is the battle for Hamburger Hill fought in May of 1969 which actually did change the way the war was fought. From wikipedia.com:

The backlash due to the high casualties over a strategically unimportant point led to dramatic changes in the conduct of the war, and Hamburger Hill would be the last major US ground assault of the war.

Hmmm. Wonder how many causulties? Would you believe 84?

Down at the local bank yesterday taking care of busness and had the chance to talk with Dave W. for a bit. The current mess in the home mortage business and the banks that will be affected by it came up. Didn't dawn on me till later but the S&L mess in the late 80's - are we experiencing something similar to that? The wikipedia link references this from John Kenneth Gailbraith:

"the largest and costliest venture in public misfeasance, malfeasance and larceny of all time."^[1]

Wow. So, we have this growning banking and home mortgage problem and we have the three trillion dollar war and we have jobs going who knows where but definitely not to Ohio and we have global warming and windy and rainy weather to boot. Sounds like we're heading into chaos; best get out a board game or a good book or turn on the television or find a place to just sit and watch Carl and Carrie Cardinal having breakfast cause 'times they are a-changing'.

Best go have breakfast and read a little more of Halberstam's The Powers That Be.