Bush has much to answer for, though he will dodge responsibility and deny his own decisions. Not all the war injuries are physical: Knight Ridder reports on the mental injuries:

The Department of Veterans Affairs is on a pace to see nearly 20,000 new cases of post-combat stress this year among service members who've served in Iraq or Afghanistan, more than six times the number of cases that officials had expected.

The latest report on patient visits to VA medical facilities shows that nearly 5,000 service members were initially diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder during the first three months of this year, on top of nearly 5,000 new diagnoses that the VA had reported for the last three months of 2005.

The VA had predicted that it would see 2,900 new cases in fiscal 2006, which runs from Oct. 1, 2005, to Sept. 30, 2006.

The VA declined to comment Monday.

"The demand for mental health is not going down," said Cathy Wiblemo, the deputy director for mental health services at the American Legion. "It's definitely going up."

Knight Ridder reported last month that the VA had dramatically underestimated the number of service members who would return from Iraq and Afghanistan with post-traumatic stress disorder.

The new report drew immediate criticism from some in Congress.

Read the full story at the link.

Arianna Huffington exactly captures Tony Snow.

For a size comparison: here’s Megs on her sisal fish. You’ll notice that she doesn’t cover it the way that Sophie does. Plus Megs loves it deeply and sincerely.

Take a look. (Though some might also be titled "Cats who look like The Little Tramp.&quot

Perhaps this explains why some people are afraid of cats….

I really like Skype, the free Voice-over-IP phone service. I use it with a Web cam to make video calls to friends and family who have Skype, and I also call regular phone numbers using the Skypeout service (free to numbers in the US and Canada, 2 cents a minute to numbers in Europe).

Skype 2.5 has a nice innovation: one of the View options is to view your Outlook contacts (in Skype). You can click on an Outlook contact in Skype and see all their phone numbers, and click on a number to call it. Very nice. And, of course, you can turn off the Outlook view when you want.

I highly recommend Skype if you have a broadband connection: a great alternative to phone companies, and Skype-to-Skype calls are encrypted end-to-end. The video aspect is also very nice: it seems to add a lot to a call to see the other person’s face. (If you use Windows XP, the Logitech QuickCam Fusion is really nice, and it includes a microphone so no headset is needed: you use the computer’s speakers for audio out. It’s available at a discount from the usual Web retailers.)

Sophie’s sitting on her sisal fish, barely visible beneath her bulk. She likes the fish okay, whereas Megs has a close, loving relationship with her sisal fish—which does not preclude her sitting on it and scratching the hell out of its nose.