The Editor's Desk

Mike Luckovich elegantly and efficiently illustrates what I’ve warned about regarding presidential authority in an editorial cartoon of his we ran in the Desert Dispatch on Wednesday.

Luckovich comes to the paper from a pretty hard left direction (cartoonist Bob Gorrell, whom we also run, tends more toward the right, though he’s not a Bush fan these days), so it’s interesting for him to note the flip side of giving the president too much authority. No matter who you support now, someday somebody you don’t want is going to be sitting in that chair.

The commander of Iraqi’s own military forces was at Fort Irwin to attend Brig. Gen Dana J.H. Pittard’s assumption of command there, and made some interesting points.

He thinks Iraqi troops would benefit from the kind of training offered at Fort Irwin. It’s an interesting little twist — the military provides this training to help our soldiers understand what they’re going to be dealing with in Iraq. And now we have Iraq leaders saying their own military could benefit from this training.

It got me wondering whether this is an actual opportunity. The security risks are extremely high, but I can see some clear benefits. I need some time to cogitate; I’ll plan an editorial for sometime next week about it.