A few links for the morning

Lots of good stuff in this morning's Washington Times. First up, an article about the shrinking ranks of veterans.

America's military veterans are dying at a rate of 1,849 per day, and about 1,100 of those are World War II veterans, said Department of Veterans Affairs spokesman Jo Schuda. Department of Defense officials estimate the military conducts about 1,800 military funerals a day.

The article discusses in detail the difficulties of getting a military honor guard for funerals of veterans. There afre too many dying for the active-duty military to send a detail to each one. Also, most vets today die far from a military post.

Sen. Daschle retracts Bush accusation

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle yesterday recanted his May 16 charge that President Bush had advance warning of the September 11 terror attacks, the latest example of a top Democrat backing off from such a claim.

"We were told on that particular morning that the president had received a particular set of facts that he may or may not have received. He has denied having received that information. And we accept that," the South Dakota Democrat said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Mr. Daschle added: "If he says he didn't receive it, I'm not going to challenge that. What I'm going to say is, why didn't he receive it?"

Tom, maybe it's because Mr. Bush's predecessor in the White House gutted American intelligence-gathering capabilities and never paid close attention to the threat.

One of the best speeches in American history: Douglas MacArthur's address to cadets at West Point

I won't even try to excerpt MacArthur's speech about duty, honor, country. Jsut read the whole thing.

I do recall, though, that Machiavelli said that a nation's military is always the final depository of the nation's virtues. When the national character is so corrupted that the military is no longer virtuous, then the end of the nation is near.