CHRIS ANDERSON: “The TV broadcasting business stinks.”

JON HENKE on the Democrats’ latest Iraq pronouncements:

So, after 2 years of debating Iraq policy, the Democrats have decided that training Iraqi security forces to take over and reducing US deployments as they do—”as Iraq stands up, we will stand down”—is the best course in Iraq? And this epiphany, Richard Cohen writes, may have “pointed the administration and the country toward a realistic and modestly hopeful course on Iraq.” . . .

This was the strategy Bush enunciated in August of 2003, September of 2003, May of 2004, and many other times. It was the strategy outlined in this May 2004 “Fact Sheet: The Transition to Iraqi Self-Government”.

The Democrats have not come up with a new Iraq Policy. They’ve jumped onboard the Bush administration’s existing policy, with the novel new suggestion that we stay the course…but try harder.

Personally, I think that letting them pretend they’re suggesting something novel is a small price to pay for bringing them onboard, if that’s what it accomplishes. I suspect the White House will feel the same way.

Unfortunately, the Democrats’ efforts to look as if they’re presenting something new have led them to wrap their proposals in Vietnamesque language, which has the potential to do damage in and of itself. As I said earlier: “I think that an agreement to withdraw as a democratically elected Iraqi government wants, and in a fashion that ensures it can handle the insurgents, is very different from an immediate unilateral withdrawal at the behest of U.S. politicians who say the war is ‘unwinnable.'”

That kind of language — the “unwinnable” comes from Rep. Murtha — makes a difference, as do the tiresome and inaccurate Vietnam references and “Bush lied” claims, a product of partisan politics and Boomer narcissism.

UPDATE: Reader Rick Skeean emails:

You should say”some narcissistic Boomers”. The way you phrased it makes you guilty of “Boomerism”, a form of bigotry no less pernicious than any “ism.”

Fair enough. Though the narcissist Boomers seem heavily overrepresented in politics and the media. Then again, that makes sense . . . .

MORE: Joe Lieberman, back from Iraq, says he’s encouraged by what he saw.

ACCORDING TO THE BBC, the Canadian Government is “set to fall.”

A WALKWAY with solar-powered lighted tiles? That’s kind of cool.

YUCK:

A federally funded study suggests U.S. farmers, veterinarians and meat processors have a markedly high risk of infection from flu viruses spread by pigs.

Scientists conducting the study, funded in part by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the fact pigs can be infected by swine viruses, bird viruses and human flu viruses means they act as virtual virus “mixing bowls.”

“The worry is if a pig were to become simultaneously infected with both a human and an avian influenza virus, genes from these viruses could reassemble into a new virus that could be transmitted to, and cause disease in, people,” said NIAID Director Anthony Fauci.

So we need to worry about sanitation on pig farms, not just poultry farms.

COCK CROWS, SUN RISES: Donald Sensing predicted it last week, and David Broder writes it this week.

Of course, if Broder weren’t so predictable, he wouldn’t be David Broder.

IN RESPONSE TO THE EARLIER REVERSE-VIETNAM POSTS, Armed Liberal Marc Danziger sends a link to this post on the L.A. Times’ antimilitary bias.

UPDATE: Read this post, too.

MICHAEL TOTTEN REPORTS from the Lebanese-Israeli border, where things have been hot again. We’re certainly seeing more bloggers-turned-Mideast-reporters lately.

EVERYBODY’S DOING CHRISTMAS-GIFT SUGGESTIONS, and Wired offers its “Ultimate Geek Gift Guide.” But I’m not terribly impressed.

Sure, I’d like one of these, but it’s awfully pricey. Unless Bill Gates takes a shine to me, I’m not going to get one for Christmas, and unless I hit the lottery (which would require that I, like, enter the lottery first) I’m not likely to give one, either.

I like their sorting of universal remote controls into “tricky,” “complicated,” and, of course, “nightmare”. That certainly seems about right. But it’s not selling me!

And I already got the complete Monty Python’s Flying Circus collection for Christmas last year. (Or was it the year before? At any rate, “I’ve already got one.”) Sorry; I’m a geek, but this doesn’t do it for me.

But hey, Serenity comes out on December 20th. Too bad I’ve already pre-ordered it. Now I actually do need a new blender . . . .

Several readers have emailed asking for gadget recommendations, but my gadget-blogging is mostly about gadgets I’ve bought myself (nobody’s lining up to send me free digital cameras or Xboxes), and the whole book-writing thing has kept me too busy to do much of that lately. If you’ve got any ideas that look better than Wired’s pass ’em on.

UPDATE: A reader emails:

For us broke geeks who cannot afford pricey toys, Think Geek (www.thinkgeek.com) has the greatest assortment of mindgames, geeky cubicle toys, and other assorted to goodies guaranteed to light up the geekiest heart.

Yeah, I’ve been boycotting them since a supersmall digital camera I bought was no good. But that’s probably silly on my part — I do tend to be highly loyal to people who give me good experiences, and the contrary to those who don’t — and certainly shouldn’t extend to anyone else.

Meanwhile, Will Collier emails about the “tricky” universal remote:

I bought one of the Logitech Harmony 880 remotes a few weeks ago. The wife had had it with multiplying remote controls, and demanded something simple.

The 880 was, as noted in the Amazon reviews, not a piece of cake to set up. It took me about an hour with the thing plugged into my iBook, loading settings, trying the remote, re-loading settings, and re-testing. That was not fun. Since then though, it’s been no trouble at all. Bottom line: if you get one, be prepared to spend some time getting it configured, but once you do have it set up and tweaked for your system, it’s great. One-button turn-ons for multiple devices and a nice bright color screen with simple labels like “Watch ReplayTV” or “Watch DVDs” are a nice change from the cryptic buttons on most other universal remotes. And the wife likes it.

Of course, I would be even happier if the thing were $150 cheaper, but like Steven Wright once noted, “You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?”

Er, everywhere? And here’s a list of book recommendations, from the NRO folks.

THE CARNIVAL OF THE CAPITALISTS is up! So is the Carnival of Personal Finance.

CONTINUING THE REVERSE-VIETNAM THEME, here’s an article from the Christian Science Monitor on how the troops see the war. It’s quite different from what’s on the news:

Like many soldiers and marines returning from Iraq, Mayer looks at the bleak portrayal of the war at home with perplexity – if not annoyance. It is a perception gap that has put the military and media at odds, as troops complain that the media care only about death tolls, while the media counter that their job is to look at the broader picture, not through the soda straw of troops’ individual experiences.

Except that for the most part, what we get from the Big Media is just a different (and utterly predictable and negative) soda-straw view. You want perspective, you have to go to places like StrategyPage. Or blogs like The Belmont Club.

THE INDONESIAN GOVERNMENT is attacking Islamist terrorism by letting the terrorists talk. Experience indicates that the more people know about those guys, the less they like them. (Via ATC).

JIM PINKERTON looks at Maureen Dowd and Hugh Hefner.

MORE ON GENERAL MOTORS’ PROBLEMS, over at GlennReynolds.com. And I wish I’d read this Michael Barone column on the failure of the UAW/GM postwar economic vision.

BRUCE WILLIS, inspired by Michael Yon’s blog-reporting from the front, wants to make a pro-war film about Iraq.

BLOGGER-TURNED-REPORTER BILL ROGGIO reports back from a patrol on the Iraqi/Syrian border. He also sends this, by email: “My internet access has been limited but I’m having the time of my life in Iraq. I’ve had great access to all of the Marines and soldiers out here, and am being treated like royalty. These guys are extremely frustrated with the media and make no bones about their distaste for those who are undermining the war effort by calling for withdrawal.”

Bill also has a report on Operation Steel Curtain.

UPDATE: Reader Jack Lifton emails:

You had a link this morning to a report from an embedded newsman in Iraq who said that the troops were frustrated by the lack of support from the folks at home (at least from the MSM) and by the operational advice being given to them by strategists from deep in their armchairs.

I worked in military research and development during the Vietnam era. Many of my friends served in Vietnam and some didn’t come home. At no time during that period do I remember morale being as high as it is now in the ranks. In those days a lot of the boys (there were very few girls) didn’t have much education or exposure to high tech. My group designed, manufactured, tested, and trained them in the use of night vision equipment. I remember well our quiet pride and admiration for a soldier who had jumped into a river from a helicopter under fire to retrieve the latest starlight scope that had been lost by an injured comrade, so the enemy would not have access to it. This was at the same time as we all had a good laugh listening to Robert MacNamara tell the country that an electronic fence would keep the enemy at Bay and therefore the boys would be home by Christmas. Those of us working on the “electronic fence” knew that the junkyard dog smart Viet Cong wouldn’t be stopped by this toy or MacNamara’s strategic imagination. I appreciate that MacNamara was frightened by how close we came to nuclear war with the Soviet Union during the amateur hour nightmare of the Bay of Pigs, and that is the only reason I respect him.

Today’s troops are light-years ahead of Vietnam in education and technical awareness. Morale is high. They are fighting an army of thugs who cannot face them one-to-one and so try to “terrorize” the people on whose behalf our soldiers are fighting into asking them to leave. The thugs are in fact doing a good job on the self-absorbed opportunist seekers of power we call our elected representatives. They may have schemed themselves into and paid for some elections, but they don’t represent those of us who know that you need to fight for freedom.

Just another way it’s a reverse Vietnam.

HOLIDAY-TRAVEL HELL: I remember seeing the New York Air desk at Washington National literally overrun by a mob once. They deserved it, too. Read this story and see if you think it was deserved here. Excerpt: “One thing for sure is that I’ll remember this Thanksgiving experience long after US Airways is out of business.” Kind of like I remember New York Air . . . .

THE CARNIVAL OF THE CATS is up. So is Haveil Havalim.

UPDATE: Also the Carnival of Debt Reduction. And for something different, check out the Carnival of the Mobilists. There’s also the Carnival of the Insanities and the Carnival of Marketing.

And here’s a question: I love digital cameras, but is the About.com Carnival of Digital Cameras just a cheap traffic-getting tool for a corporate pseudo-blog, or is it a genuine item worth linking regularly? Your opinions solicited.

IT’S A TWOFER: Don Surber hosts RINO Sightings (NSFW version) and the Carnival of the Vanities.

I BLAME JOHN ASHCROFT:

OAK RIDGE – When Oak Ridge High School Principal Becky Ervin ordered the seizure of the latest school newspaper, she unleashed a controversy that’s still unfolding.

An article detailing various birth control methods and a feature about students with tattoos and body piercings triggered the seizure.

School officials searched teachers’ classrooms and desks after hours to confiscate copies of the paper, a teacher and a student say.

If only they were this diligent about teaching math.

UPDATE: This comment on the AtomicTumor blog posts what it says is the article in question. Looks pretty harmless to me.

PLAME UPDATE: “A second Time magazine reporter has agreed to cooperate in the CIA leak case and will testify about her discussions with Karl Rove’s attorney, a sign that prosecutors are still exploring charges against the White House aide.” Or somebody, anyway.

IT’S A REVERSE-VIETNAM: On Reliable Sources I said that the Plame scandal was a reverse-Watergate, with the press, not the White House, keeping the important secrets about what happened. But looking at the transcript, I see that Iraq is also a reverse Vietnam, as made clear in this statement from UPI correspondent Pamela Hess:

KURTZ: Welcome back to RELIABLE SOURCES.

Pam Hess, during Vietnam U.S. officials were often accused of distorting or even lying to the press to try to make it look like the war effort was going better than it was. When you were in Iraq did you feel like you were getting the straight story?

HESS: Certainly from the militarily I did. They have no interest in cooking the books, as it were, they — they understand that they were blamed for Vietnam and what happened, and they don’t want that blame again.

They want people to understand the kind of enemy that they are facing and how long it’s going to take. And frankly, most of them said to me, “Please go back and tell them not to pull us out because we are finally at a point where we have enough people here now on the ground between soldiers and Iraqis that we can actually start doing some good and start turning things around. And if you pull us out, we’re just going to be back here three years from now.”

KURTZ: More optimistic, at least than some of the journalists.

HESS: Yes.

(See it on video here.) In Vietnam, the brass talked happy-talk, the press talked to grunts and reported that the war was going worse than we were told. But now it’s Americans who are talking to the grunts, and, as StrategyPage noted last year, getting a different picture of how the war is going:

So you don’t have to wait for the official version of what’s going on, or for reporters on the scene to get their stories to the folks back home. The troops send email, or pick up the phone, sometimes a cell phone, and call. This has caused a lot of confusion, because the media reports of what’s happening are often at odds with what the troops are reporting. This has been particularly confusing in a year where there’s a presidential election race going on. The Democrats decided to attack the way the war on terror, and particularly the actions in Iraq, was being fought. Part of that approach involved making the situation at the front sound really, really bad. But the troops over there seemed to be reporting a different war. And when troops came home, they were amazed at what they saw in the newspapers and electronic media. Politics and reality don’t mix.

It’s not surprising, then, that the more connection people have to the war, the better they think things are going. That’s precisely the opposite of what we saw in Vietnam, of course.

By the way, I often link Dunnigan’s StrategyPage, but if you’re interested in this kind of stuff you should really check out his books. There are quite a few, but I particularly recommend his primer on all things military, How to Make War, and his book on special forces, The Perfect Soldier: Special Operations, Commandos, and the Future of U.S. Warfare.

While I was in New York I managed to have breakfast with Dunnigan and Austin Bay, and enjoyed listening in on their conversation. I wish we saw more of that sort of thing in major media — but then it wouldn’t be a reverse-Vietnam, would it?

UPDATE: This seems different, too:

Seventy percent of people surveyed said that criticism of the war by Democratic senators hurts troop morale — with 44 percent saying morale is hurt “a lot,” according to a poll taken by RT Strategies. Even self-identified Democrats agree: 55 percent believe criticism hurts morale, while 21 percent say it helps morale. . . .

Just three of 10 adults accept that Democrats are leveling criticism because they believe this will help U.S. efforts in Iraq. A majority believes the motive is really to “gain a partisan political advantage.”

It’s just not 1969, however much some people might wish otherwise.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Jeff Goldstein has more: “I’d add that this latest poll—coming as it does on the heels of a forceful Administration counterattack against their critics—suggests what we’ve always known, anyway: down deep, most Americans are optimistic, and will treat with suspicion those who preach US weakness and failure and dishonesty.”

MORE: My colleague Tom Plank, who was leading a platoon in Vietnam while I was learning to ride a two-wheeler, emails:

I saw your post on Reverse Vietnam. I am deeply skeptical of the claim that the military misled the press or the American people about the Vietnam War. It may be that the top political leaders downplayed the costs of the war, and perhaps senior military officers went along with this, but I thought the reporting on the war was nevertheless much more negative than what was actually going on. The idea of the press reporting objectively on the war is I think another urban myth.

Two classic examples: the 1968 Tet Offensive, reported as a great defeat for the US, but which was a victory for the US and which was a devastating loss for the Viet Cong and NVA (essentially resulted in the destruction of the indigenous South Vietnamese Viet Cong).

The second example is the seige at Khe San. This was reported as a defeat for the US, with lots of comparisons to Dien Bien Phu, but the several month long seige at Khe San resulted in the destruction of several NVA divisions at the cost of several hundred US troops. By 1970, the US had defeated the NVA (the indigenous Viet Cong had long been pretty much out of the picture).

The real failure in Vietnam was not to invest in the development of a truly representative democratic government in the south and commit to protect that government from invasion from the north. Of course, then we were primarily interested in fighting communism instead of developing democracy and self determination. In Iraq, I think we have learned to foster self determination, local style.

Well, good point. I was referring to the conventional narrative above, and tried to be properly noncommittal in my phrasing: “the press talked to grunts and reported that the war was going worse than we were told.” But in truth, the extensive, and sometimes obviously deliberate misrepresentation of this war has caused me to revise my confidence in other reporting in the past sharply downward.

Another favorite bit from the Reliable Sources transcript, by the way, is this from Paul Krugman: “If Walter Cronkite were alive — sorry, he is alive.” Heh. Cronkite remains alive, and was most recently heard emitting Grandpa-Simpsonesque complaints about the Internet. Colby Cosh’s valediction: “he seems to lack the vestigial humility one might demand of someone whose preeminence in American life is long vanished, and was based mostly on the parts of his career spent reading other people’s words into a camera lens.” Krugman’s Cronkite-nostalgia is predictable, though, and predictably misplaced.

IRELAND VS. THE SCANDINAVIAN MODEL: Some interesting data at Brussels Journal.

THIS WEEK’S BLOG MELA is up!

THE MANOLO offers some holiday-shopping fashion principles.