I ran across two very interesting articles this morning while sitting at the Dr’s office.

‘GM cocaine grown in Colombia’
I found this fascinating since I just recently read about Round-Up resistant coca.

I can’t say I’m surprised about either story. It would seem to me that coca growers have as much money as any company doing transgenic research, so why should they be any different?

Once again, I have to wonder how different things would be if drugs were legalized, which would then legalize coca production. What might that do for countries like Columbia?

Second article I also came across in the DA, and also heard something about this last night on The World:
Troops grill Rumsfeld over Iraq
What bothered me most about the bit I heard on the world, was the statement that troops weren’t having to travel in unarmored vehicles. This is, to the best of my knowledge, completely false. A woman who works in this building was very upset last month, because he son told her that he had just travelled through Iraq in an unarmored convoy. Neither had any reason to make this up, and it squares with everything else I’ve read and heard: That are troops are just not being given the armor they need.

Mr Rumsfeld added that vehicle armour might not provide total protection from the perils faced by soldiers in Iraq – such as roadside bombs.

Of course not. Nothing can provide total protection. But an armored vehicle has to be a hell of a lot more protection than an unarmored one!

How (HOW?!) can we send out soldiers into harms way without appropriate equipment? I’ve complained about this before, and it still makes no sense to me.

It also makes me very angry at the fools who sport “yellow ribbons” to “support the troops” but could care less beyond that what happens. I don’t see them saying anything about cuts in combat pay, or cuts in veterans’ benefits.

But they’re all for tax cuts.