I'm trying not to blog, because there's something else I want and need to be working on. But this is too good to pass up. While I have been slacking off, Alex at the Yorkshire Ranter has written several excellent posts over the past few days on the weird specifics of military privatization.

But here's my favorite, for the sheer paranoid aesthetics: A news story detailing how, in one particular situation, real policemen in Iraq were told to stay home from work so that Americans would know that any policeman on the street was a fake (and presumably could be shot at). This is very deep into Philip K. Dick territory. Now, of course, the Iraq situation is dire. But it is not improved by Americans suffering from a massive lithium deficiency.