Daniel Drezner responds. heh.

The reports (here and here) are mostly the same; individual neighborhoods begin to arm themselves against criminal thugs. Coalition forces are not to be seen...Kofi Annan (UN SecGen) says its a civil war...So does NBC...These are dark days indeed for Iraqis. My thoughts are with them. I wouldn't get so wrapped up in 'is it or is it not civil war'. Things are *bad* there, and not getting better. The movers and shakers have to move and shake to stop deterioration which could lead to all-out war.

0 to 60 in 4 seconds, no gas required, 250 mi before recharging. Now if they could just get the price down...

No shocks there. I expect a surge of 'tennis elbow' type injuries. Really, this is not new stuff. Stretching before and after will probably help, also in the beginning, take lots of breaks, and don't play too long each day.

Some FOB scored a great camera for $500 off (or so), and a humorous incident. Way to go!

My experience was less thrilling. I went online at 3am to compusa, I got great deals there last year. This year, their BF stuff wasn't available online; there were no real deals. Then we went to bestbuy to get mom a computer. We were rushing the whole thing, CompUSA had the same PC for $300 or $400 less. But the reality is that the PC wouldn't likely be still there at CompUSA. Anyway I picked up a 250 gig HD for $60, and a copy of zone alarm internet security for $10 for mom. Mom got her media center PC for $1100 inc. 17" LCD (ouch), and managed to score a real nice all-in-one printer, should be free after rebate. Since there wasn't anything I really needed (and i don't think that awesome camera was available locally), I didn't even attempt to go out and stand in line all night. Anyway i'm slightly too lazy and picky; the probability of getting the really good stuff is very very low, due to the crush of people. I didn't have that sort of time, being on vacation.

I use Kaspersky Internet Security (reviewed by PC World here) on J's machine (as noted, very few options exist for Win64), and it seems great. I like the fact that it's extremely fast startup, and according to tests low overhead. Certainly better than Norton Internet Security. Anyway! Now Zonealarms is combining Kaspersky AV into their next suite. Zone Alarm has a pretty good IS suite already (see this article), so this will just add punch.

I'll just note that Kaspersky IS was free after rebate when I bought it recently, you need to have a competitors product though. The trick with these IS suites is to keep the packaging/manuals, so you can get a competitive upgrade next year. So you shouldn't ever have to pay full retail; and usually its really really cheap after rebates (ie free or $10 or $20).

At least the first five episodes (so far).

Spengler at Asian Times suggests that Iran is already collapsing economically, and by 2030 they will have very few young people in which to drive the workforce and military. Interesting stuff. But demographics is not necessarily a hallmark of social collapse. The US after all has a more skewed demographic distribution due to the baby boomers. We are hardly a society in the state of collapse. But his basic point is that a culture which fails to replace its population or expand the population by definition will cease to exist. Hard to believe that a culture or a society will actually choose to 'go extinct' if you would. Yet that is the suggestion. I'm sceptical, but it's an interesting point of view.

The Chronicle notes that violent crimes are down, and in October the number of homicides was the lowest since 2002. I figured sooner or later they'd catch on regarding the lack of increase of violent crimes as a whole due to the 'Katrina Effect'. They attribute more police presence as a deterrent.

Earlier posts on the subject are here and especially here.

A great Newsweek article, just came out. I like Newsweek since they talk about things that I care about, and don't have as much of a political agenda (unlike US News, Time, and others). Big magazine people, 99% of people don't care about national or international politics. Stop acting like they do.

Anyway. Yeah, there was a good legistlative package in last years congress that may just get passed now that the republicans are not in charge. It got blocked by TX Rep Joe Barton, chair of the energy and commerce committee (WTF does that committee have to do with health care and research?). Anyway. Yeah, he's an asshat, and no I didn't vote for him (not my district).

Amazing advance in nanotech is responsible for the coolness of the Wiimote. (Is it really nanotech? I suggest yes. Whatever it is, the technology is way cool).

Even Newsweek gets the fact that DRM doesn't work.

Every year someone's house around here burns down because of a turkey fryer incident. Yes, people actually deep fry huge turkeys. Is it safe? Heck no. Anyway, this is what the Harris Country Citizen Corps has to say about it.

==============

A longtime food favorite in the southern United States, the delicious deep-fried turkey has quickly grown in popularity thanks to celebrity chefs like Emeril Lagasse. While some people rave about this tasty creation, Underwriters Laboratories Inc.'s (UL) safety experts are concerned that backyard chefs may be sacrificing safety for good taste.

According to the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), cooking accidents are the leading cause of home fires in the United States and over three quarters of these fires occur at the range around mealtime. In fact there are more than 96,000 house fires each year caused by cooking equipment.

"We're worried by the increasing reports of fires related with turkey fryer use," says John Drengenberg, UL consumer affairs manager. "Based on our test findings, the fryers used to produce those great-tasting birds are not worth the risks. And, as a result of these tests, UL has decided not to certify any turkey fryers with our trusted UL Mark."

For those of you who can’t resist the taste of a fried turkey like myself, I’ve listed a few tips that will make your experience safer these holidays.

If you absolutely must use a turkey fryer, here are some tips for safer use:

# Turkey fryers should always be used outdoors a safe distance from buildings and any other material that can burn.
# Never use turkey fryers on wooden decks or in garages.
# Make sure the fryers are used on a flat surface to reduce accidental tipping.
# Never leave the fryer unattended. Most units do not have thermostat controls. If you don't watch the fryer carefully, the oil will continue to heat until it catches fire.
# Never let children or pets near the fryer when in use. Even after use, never allow children or pets near the turkey fryer. The oil inside the cooking pot can remain dangerously hot, hours after use.
# To avoid oil spillover, do not overfill the fryer.
# Use well-insulated potholders or oven mitts when touching pot or lid handles. If possible, wear safety goggles to protect your eyes from oil splatter.
# Make sure the turkey is completely thawed and be careful with marinades. Oil and water don't mix, and water causes oil to spill over, causing a fire or even an explosion hazard.
# The National Turkey Federation recommends refrigerator thawing and to allow approximately 24 hours for every five pounds of bird thawed in the refrigerator.
# Keep an all-purpose fire extinguisher nearby. Never use water to extinguish a grease fire. Remember to use your best judgment when attempting to fight a fire. If the fire is manageable, use an all-purpose fire extinguisher. If the fire increases, immediately call 9-1-1 for help.

Even after use, never allow children or pets near the turkey fryer. The oil inside the cooking pots remains dangerously hot, hours after use.

In a very unscientific poll, Gamesutra asked game developers what system they would like to get, either the Wii or PS3. Almost all said the Wii; the major reasons being price, lack of compelling titles, and the general funness and uniqueness of the Wii. That makes sense to me too; I won't buy a PS3 ever, its too expensive and headed for obsolecence because of Sony arrogance. Also the Wii titles seem fun, which is really what I am after. There is certainly a dirth of unique games nowadays; almost everything is some variant of a first person shooter. Boring!

(aka Brad Wardell, the developer of Galactic Civilizations). It's a great interview and covers all the major points; what he's working on, what he thinks of piracy, what the next generation will be, including many trips down memory lane. Brad's a really smart CEO type guy, knows how to make a profitable piece of software and how to please the fans. He did that very well with GalCiv. Not surprisingly, he loved MOO and KOTOR. My kind of guy.

is here. A San Antonio wine made it, at #99.

In An Anbar province, the heart of the insurgency, blogger Michael Fumento embeds. Great read.

That's the undertone I'm reading anyway. People started lining up WEDNESDAY for a Friday morning sale of PS3s, Sony HQ refused to say how many stock they had on hand at that location. So the traditional mob ensues. How about a) People buying a clue and realizing their world won't end if they don't get a PS3 in a few months, b) Sony actually learning to COUNT and c) then handing out tickets to the first X people in line, and sending everyone else home! But, no, they actually want the mob. I hate sony for these stupid arrogant tactics. Also the exploding batteries, the Memorystick, Blue-Ray, etc. Mark me, in a year the PS3 will actually decrease in cost as they learn how to manufacturer the blu-ray cheaply. And you'll be able to go to your local store and get it w/o waiting in line. ANd they may actually have a few non-sucky games you can play on it. But I surely won't plunk down $600 for a freaking console (a more powerful PC can be had at the same price).

Yup. Agree 100%. What is funny is that every single console since the NES has been predicted to be a PC killer. But you know what, eventually they will buy a clue, and figure out that the freaking consoles are just crippled PCs. Eventually they will figure out that we don't really need 5 PCs in the house, just one that works well and can act as a server. Oh, wait, linux already does this pretty well. (really well actually).

Update: C. Spencer Beggs has a great review of the Wii update at Foxnews. He loves it, and sees it as a revolutionary game device. Which it is. He pans the photos and other features, pointing that everyone already has a PC so they can browse the web or photos. But seriously, why does every single new piece of hardware have to say "it can view your photos, too!" On your crappy 200x200 resolution TV. Let me think, TiVo, yup. Xbox360/Ps3, big yup. Almost all digicams have TV hookups nowadays. Original xbox, i can't remember. Probably.

By all I mean the Dow Industrial Average, the Nasdaq composite, and the S&P 500. At least, according to this guy, and the numbers. But wait, what about inflation. Good question. Since inflation occurs ever year, you'd have to increase the 'score' more than inflation to show a real gain. For example, if inflation is 1% per year, your market indicator, ie the S&P 500, would have to increase more than 1% to actually grow wealth. Less that a 1% growth and you'd actually lose money vs last year. So I did the inflation adjustment, and there is no real gain for the Nasdaq since 1999.

This is interesting. Apparently, eating a single cookie is enough to power a low-voltage laptop for 4 hours. You'd have to burn the energy of the cookie and convert it into work via a bicycle generator. Of course nowadays laptops and desktops are energy pigs. THe latest video cards suck down 200-250W of power (or up to 315W under load). Then you have the CPU sucking down a ton more power. Nowadays, I bet you'd be lucky to get an hour out of a cookie. But still, cookie vs 5 lb expensive battery. Humans are clearly cheaper and more efficient! (just wait until they release bacteria batteries - just add sugar).

At Dealspl.us

Some good deals in there!

Update: Such as teh $99 laptop. Catch 1) You have to get a cell phone subscription to get that price (otherwise it's $300). Catch 2) Each store will only have a handful. It's called a come-on folks, i'm sure you've seen it before. J's laptop is so slow and crippled as to be useless. It can't play games. The wired network is broken. The wireless network works poorly due to interference from the TV or TiVo. The HD is slow. There isn't enough RAM. That's why we upgraded her for $500 or so, got a real nice computer for the price too. OTOH, the specs look decent, 512MB of RAM, 60 G HD, DVD burner, 15.4" LCD. It will run stuff fine, but not games of course (the graphics aren't up to snuff).

(link) Catholic vocations are rising. Good.

Jim Allchin (and others) are now saying no antivirus program should be used in Windows, especially windows vista. They have a good point, if the security of the OS is really up to snuff, and if you're not an idiot, then you should be fine. But...sometimes viral payloads get delivered without user intervention. That being said, i recently liberated our house from Symantec, having gotten tired of it it's lack of support for Win64, and the general slower-than-molasses feeling. I upgraded to Kaspersky internet security for J's desktop, it's a great AV program and not CPU intensive. For my Win64 system, I rely on NOD32/64, one of the very few programs that will actually run in Win64. It's a great program and very low maintenance (and at least currently totally free). In fact i haven't touched it since i installed it, and it grabs and installs anti-viral updates ever day.

Now, when I upgrade, I won't touch Symantec with a ten foot pole. I'll get Nod32 or Kaspersky or a similiar program.

Ed Bott tries to install linux on two 'typical' machines (whatever that word means) - a 6 year old laptop (no go, not without extra RAM and a 40 G HD), and a shuttle box (worked fine). The results were predictable; the laptop wireless wouldn't work out of the box, several hours and many 'fixes' later it works. Then WPA wouldn't work, several more hours, no fix yet. Presumedly the shuttle box worked, he never responded. But that's been my linux experience too. Application installation is a major pain, and lots of bugs crop up. While there is alot of user help available, and google is a blessing, it's still so much *easier* to get stuff done in Windows. I spent several hours this weekend trying to get WMA music to run on linux, still no joy (the only distro available has only binary code for x86 machines, I run Athlon 64). Although on the plus side I was able to play an ancient 8 bit DOS game, whereas Windows 64 refuses to run any 16 bit apps. I really like linux and want it to work, but damn they need some serious apps (ie Windows Media Player, Windows File Explorer) to make it worthwhile (although Open Office seems very good). Anyway since I'm having so much trouble I might as well upgrade to Vista, it couldn't be much worse.

Specifically, Lonely Among Us. Good memories, but man TV was so simple back then.(i substituted simple from *lame*) Nowadays, shows tend to be rather complex with large story arcs that actually matter (unlike the Data - Holmes connection, which, while cute, didn't have a purpose).

MDACC's internal newsletter has a feature on blogs, specifically patient blogs, with two perspectives: an MD's perspective and a lawyer's perspective. The MD argues that the patient blog can be helpful in a theraputic setting, as a coping mechanism. Indeed, I think social networks of any type, either online or real, would be a critical component of a cancer patients treatment. Michael Fisch, M.D. says this about patient blogs: "Rather than feeling lonely, isolated, powerless or bored, patients may choose writing a blog as an outlet and a coping mechanism, and as a way of reaching out."

He also mentioned the possible academic/informational potential of blogs. "...patients, family members and employees could find links to cancer information, clinical trials and other topics of value to this audience. Perhaps we could even invite faculty and staff to offer professional commentary on selected blogs."

Carrie Lyons, J.D., vice president and chief compliance officer (the lawyer) has a different perspective and one I take position against.

Depending upon where or how patient blogs are maintained, certain information contained in a patient blog could qualify as protected health information. This would legally require us to obtain the patient’s authorization for its disclosure. And because of the casual nature of blogs, patients might not only disclose their own PHI, but also unintentionally disclose PHI about other patients without permission, in which case regulatory agencies (and under certain circumstances, courts of law) may hold M. D. Anderson ultimately responsible for those disclosures.

In addition, unproven claims contained in patient blogs may be misinterpreted by the public as M. D. Anderson-endorsed information and/or education. This issue could pit our core value of integrity, which arguably supports patient blogging, against our mission to educate the public, which requires educating the public with credible information.

First of all, PHI is things like DOB, diganosis, patient name, social security number, etc. For example, I couldn't mentioned to my neighbor that I saw her daughter being treated here. But I could mention to colleagues that a 38 year old female with glioblastoma was treated with a chemotherapy regime and describe her outcome.

Anyway, it's the patients PHI. They need to understand our compliance issues but there is nothing to prevent them from blogging their cancer experience and put whatever private they want *about themselves* not other patients. The second issue is of where to host the blog. There is no reason MDACC to get caught up in hosting blogs, since we'd likely do it poorly. Blogger and others does a great job of free blog hosting.

The second issue is the word of mouth issue. Blogs tend to be about people's gripes, and there is the fear that if we allow people to blog (or support it) then patients will naturally gripe about MDACC. Two perspectives on that. A friend of mine was treated here, and there were a bunch of snafus associated with her visit, so I am well aware that this is not a perfect world. Second, if patients want to gripe, wouldn't that lead to improvement? Instead of hiding the issue, it should be exposed. If they received crummy treatment, regardless that it's the best hospital in the U.S. (for the 3rd year in a row, as was recently released), things should improve. I know monolithic institutions are resistant to change, but I can't help but seeing more 'patient reviews' as a good thing.

(link) I mean, since when was eating gold toxic? Not surprisingly, there is few research on oral ingestion of elemental Au, since it's a) expensive and b) nobody is stupid enough to eat gold. But this paper suggests some toxicity but some potential chemotherapy enhancement (which is frequently seen with cytotoxic agents)

Not exactly a defining moment for congression anti-corruption and anti-pork campaigns, since he managed to do both at the same time last year. The citizens have voted for change, congress (as previously noted), as defined as less corruption, less pork, and 'fixing Iraq but not cutting and running'. Are you listening? Now the dems 1) propose to cut and run 2) elect someone who is no stranger to congression corruption and pork. I guess if you change the tune but not the institution, nothing is going to change.

Yup. This is coming from a Stanford study recently released saying that 1 in 8 of Americans they randomly surveyed show signs of potential net addiction. Kudos to the researchers for this study, which looks robust in terms of randomness and sample size.

I remember telling mom this when I was in high school, 10ish years ago, about the rise of net addiction. Its the feeling of 'got to be plugged in all the time' type behavior. Occasionally i'm guilty too. But what is addictive behavior? When it infringes on social contacts, jobs, health, etc. As Dr. Orzack put it:

"If it is a loss [where] you are not getting to work, and family relationships are breaking down as a result around it and this is something you can't handle, then it's too much."

I would say (have said) the WOW addicts (and other MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role playing game) addicts) fully fit into this category.

Me? I can take it or leave it. I never got into MMORPGs, I didn't like shelling out money every month, and got burned on everquest (i got in 5 years too late, and it was a unpleasant/boring experience). But, yeah, I agree with people echoing a concern for those who are too plugged in. What does it gain you? It merely relieves boredom and offers an escape from a dreary life. Used properly, connectivity is a great tool for keeping networks of people (social or business people networks) informed quickly. Used improperly, you waste more time than you gain in efficiency costs.

La Shawn Barber also notes he/she has an addictive personality. To an addict, anything can be addictive. Drugs, sex, booze, food, exercise, work, you name it. It's all there. And our society makes it so easy too; nobody takes their leisure more seriously than us (this may be a stereotype, but the US entertainment market is large that most countries GDP). Intellectually, I know these addictions are just escapism, yet why did I spend the entire weekend playing a 20 year old game?

HT: Blogfather.

This is a good article from the weekly standard. I hope the dems are not so foolish as to think immediate withdrawl is a solution, yet if they are going to nominate Murtha for speaker that's not a step in the right direction.

buh bye! Why did it take a complete shift of power in the congress for Bush to get his head out of his ass and realize Iraq isn't working, and the reason it isn't working is b/c their plan failed, well really they didn't have a plan. We need a new plan and new civilian leadership to get Iraq together. We should not be pulling out until the job is done, probably another 5 years. This isn't Vietnam, in which we were fighting a heavily funded opposition government. Iraq is winnable if we get Syria and Iran to stop funding insurgents, and if the Iraqis get serious about corruption and want change. It will be long and tough, but sacking Rummy is a step in the right direction.

Austin Bay says Joe Libberman ('Fighting Joe') is the new messiah. Who am I to disagree? Okay, he doesn't say that, but he's thinking it. Anyway Joe supported the War on Terror (WOT) and won big against his rival, suggesting that people can still back congressmen strong on terror yet liberal in other respects such as healthcare.

Yet, in voter surveys, people ranked the WOT the same as other issues such as congressional corruption as a reason to vote for their candidate. So, yes, the WOT is big, but there are other issues that are still important (ie economy, schools, healthcare, etc). Survey results are here.

Update: Greyhawk has more analysis, and more depth. Key quote, if the election was all about Iraq, why did it place 4th on voter's concerns?

Microsoft actually has a good method that works. Pretty straight-forward too.

I didn't know there were 10 real games available for linux. Anyway here they are.

(story here)(RT=Radiation therapy). Cool!

Gateway Pundit has some small bit of news.

So I've been researching who to vote for, for U.S. Congress one of our senators is up for re-elect (Kay Bailey Hutchison), but is pretty much guaranteed to win; she has some 2/3s of those polled saying they will vote for her. And for the House, our district isn't even contested! Then there's the historical data showing 97% of incumbents get re-elected. Anyway. Maybe I won't vote, but I'd still like to get a say in our governor race. The incumbent Perry is up 12 points though to a spread of folk.

Red wine inhibits onset of heart disease and prolongs life in mice.

Fully two years after it's release, Win64 has practically no native applications. Most critical is the lack of antivirus; the major AV companies don't have a 64-bit version, and the 32 bit versions will not work (unlike w/ any other software). This is due to technical reasons; the AV software is designed to interact with the operating system directly and not through emulation. (The security aspects of upgrading to xp64 is covered here.)

Anyway here is a small round-up of 64bit native applications.

This roundup is larger and written in November of 2005 (later than previous one)

Here is an article on one user's experience and a round-up of apps that do and don't work.

Also I found that MS has a trial version of WinXP64

My hard drive bought the farm a week ago, and i lost everything for the last year. However, I managed to get alot of stuff backed up in various places. For example

1) My music collection was on my Mp3 player
2) Our photos are either on DVD or the latest ones are online
3) Work backup data is still on work PC

Nowadays it's impossible to easily backup data, let alone an entire drive. One possibility is RAID mirroring, but you have to invest in two identical drives (nowadays all motherboards come with the chips necessary to do RAID). However, if a power surge comes along, or if there is a fire, you are still out of luck. Tape drives are antiqudated, and DVDs are only so big (and dual-layer dvds are too expensive). The next generation of DVDs aren't out yet, either. So there is no cheap & easy way to make sure everything you have is backed up, really. The best compromise is an external hard drive stored off site. A second idea is to backup documents, etc onto a DVD, upload your photos to a photo archiving site such as pbase, and have a large enough ipod to store all your music.

Then there is the problem of reinstalling everything. Nowadays decent software is somewhat affordable. For example, as a UT student I bought several copies of the operating system, WinXP, for $30, and also MS Office. Online (ie with pricegrabber) you can get OEM versions (CD only) of many important programs such as Norton Internet Security ($20), Nero ($10), Adobe Photoshop Elements ($20). So you have legit, useable copies of important programs that you can reinstall easily. The cheaper programs are a year or two old, but we've finally reached the point where there is not too much difference between upgrades. Adobe PS 9 looks pretty much like PS 6 or PS 7. Nero 7 is a huge upgrade but it's already a few years old. Norton IS likewise hasn't changed that substantially in the last few years.

Anyway, long story short, some think Linux Live CDs are the answer; these are bootable CDs that will run linux without problems. You don't need a hard drive for this, but ideally you would have a flash disk or something to store work.

(story here) Okay, question. Why in 10+ years hasn't MS figured out how to stop a PC from slowing to a crawl after a few months. Rhetorical question. One fix is to install linux. Another fix is to reinstall windows (but lose your data).

Update: A smart guy at thepcspy.com has done test in which the time to startup was measured after installing various things. Norton Internet Security install caused the startup to increase 60%! That's amazing. But it doesn't measure benchmarks, how fast the PC is after bootup. But the reason why windows boot is slow is b/c there are too many programs booting up.

Update: More tests are done here.
A viral 'efficiency' test is here., which ranks anti-virus software.

A tech site, Seopher.com, reports only 21% of people that responded to their poll will upgrade to Vista. That's pretty much what Microsoft has been saying; people will upgrade because they will buy new PCs which will have Vista installed. For me, I don't plan to upgrade. There is no compelling reason to. What does Vista offer that XP doesn't? Yes, it handles Internet Explorer better, but I don't use IE. It may be more secure (or not), but since there are no security apps for it, it's hard to say (same issue with WinXP64, there are no good antiviral/firewall apps for it, easily available I mean. Symantec has an antivirus package in their corporate suite, I thought that was pretty stupid). Anyway, yeah, no compelling reason, and its just more of the same, more hard disk space, more memory , more CPU power, down the drain. XP runs fairly well, and our institution just upgraded (large insitutions are always 2+ years behind the curve). So maybe in 5 years they will upgrade to Vista, when hardware that can run it easily is available, and when MS cuts support for XP). My guess: People will upgrade because they are forced to by MS, not for any compelling reason. Nowadays I run Winxp64 and Linux side by side, I like Win64 but it's hard to find 64-bit program (read, there are zero). Linux is fun to play with but is crippled by several issue, notably the incredible difficulty of running it, the lack of a decent file manager, and the general PITA it is to get a single piece of software to run reliably.

Will Kerry kill dem's chances this election? Hard to say, but strong possibility. Click here for the whole text of his vitrolic statement.

(Now they are saying he botched the delivery)

He said this: "You know, education -- if you make the most of it, you study hard and you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."

He was supposed to say this: "I can't overstress the importance of a great education. Do you know where you end up if you don't study, if you aren't smart, if you're intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq."

Or maybe this a coverup. Who knows. It's not that important.

I didn't vote for Kerry, but I think alot of times he wraps himself in the American flag as a VET. So if you are a vet you can do no wrong. If you are a vet, no one can criticize anything militarily, except you.

I don't think that should be true, but I do agree that the administration has dug us deeper and deeper into a hole in Iraq (and cut and run from Afghanistan) with bungled administration, widespread graft (lack of oversight), stupid policies, and now kootooing to Iraqi leaders, putting our troops in jeopardy.

I'm not sure if there is a good answer now, as the country descends into civil war. Eventually the strongest group, hopefully the govt of Iraq, will have to overcome all of these 'death squads', but I think by and large this is an issue for the Iraqi civilians, they will have to defend themselves from death squads. What will happen I think is a huge diaspora of Sunnis moving to sunni occupied territory and shiites moving to shiite territory. Eventually the violence will stop, when there is no one left to kill. By then, however, it will be too late, as the instruments of governance and the flight/execution of intellectuals kills the future for this nation.

Unfortunately the Iraqi govt doesn't have the will/means to reign-in the death squads, and the coalition has decided this is an 'iraqi matter'. This to me is a major screw-up of the Bush admin, not stopping the civil war before it got rolling. If coalition troops can not demonstrate that they can protect Iraqis and do what it takes to stop the violence, then Iraqis will take it upon themselves to protect themselves, and that means death squads and militias, and a loss of control.