Required Reading 

Actually, there's a lot of it today, so I hope you have some time to set aside.

First comes a comparison of Iraq to Iwo Jima by VodkaPundit.

Casualties on Iwo helped Truman make his decision to use nukes against Japan – bringing the war to an early conclusion and sparing hundreds of thousands of lives on both sides.

Today's atom bomb is democracy in the Middle East – and it's been dropped on Iraq. The fallout has spread far and wide, to Saudi Arabia, to Egypt, to Palestine, and perhaps even to Syria and Iran. Its effects could well bring an early conclusion to today global war, sparing thousands of lives on each side.
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Reading the news this week, it looks like our efforts in Iraq are paying off.

And if they don't? Then we'll have sacrificed 1,400 or so American lives for a great dream – compared to the 7,000 lives we once sacrificed to gain landing fields we never really needed.

Every life lost in battle, whether the war is lost or won, is an almost unspeakable tragedy. But the dream our men and women are dying for today – that's a dream worth fighting for.

If you're a history buff, you might also want to read this rebuttal on Iwo Jima by Donald Sensing.

Second comes this suggestion from The Agitator:

Given the nationwide success of public smoking bans, I submit that we should return to alcohol prohibition.
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Seems to me the case is clear. If we're going to ban an activity that goes on in bars in the name of public health, it should be drinking, not smoking.
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It goes like this: Non-smokers don't like cigarette smoke. They don't like that it gets in their hair, and their clothes, and makes their eyes watery. But they also really, really dig bars that allow smoking. Bars they don't own. Bars they didn't invest in. Bars whose livelihood doesn't depend on them. But that's not important.

Instead of starting or patronizing or investing in smokeless bars or restaurants, it's just much easier to pass a law that forces the places they already like to conform to their needs, to bend to their will, to serve them on their terms, and under their conditions. In short, they want to use the state to force everyone else to adopt their cleaner, more politically correct, more fashionable habits, and at the same time rid their lives of the hassles and inconveniences they feel are caused by the people who don't.

Your last bit of required reading is also from VodkaPundit after he returned from an alternate universe:

A Republican leader in Congress charged that President Truman's declaration of "victory in Europe" yesterday was "dangerous and premature."
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"President Truman and the Democrats have let us down," added Republican House Conference Chairman Roy Woodruff. "It was Japan who attacked us, yet Tojo and Hirohito remain at large, three and a half years later. The Democrats' foolish European campaign has cost us thousands of lives and millions of dollars, and distracted us from our real enemies. Japan attacked us on December 7, 1941, not Germany."
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Only one day after "V-E Day," German insurgents were already threatening the peace. This morning, snipers killed two American soldiers on patrol outside of Munich, and British soldiers in the port city of Bremen located a weapons cache. Presumably, the weapons were hidden to support a guerilla campaign against the Allied occupation.

I blogged quite a lot Monday which wore me out a little, so these other fine bloggers will have to be enough for you today. Enjoy.