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…and I don’t mean karma.

I was reminded of a wonderful coinage I was witness to on RASFF:

“The Napoleon-Clarke Law: Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice”

Trying to find the exact phrasing, discovered it cited on someone’s blog.

This in turn led me to another USENET post, one I missed, pointing out that the original phrase was older.

The point of this? Not much, other than being continually reminded of it by the Bush administration… which clearly manages a sufficiently advanced level of incompetence.

From: Walgreen’s puts 4 Illinois pharmacists on leave for refusing to fill prescriptions for emergency contraception at AmericaBLOG

I go to the pharmacy for medicine, not spiritual advice. If you’re opposed to the death penalty, don’t apply for a job as an excecutioner. If you’re allergic to animals, don’t become a vet.

Refers back to this boston.com article if you prefer to look directly.

What’s the Average Age Of The 2000+ US Soldiers Who Died In Iraq? 30.

The average age of the soldiers who died in Vietnam was 19. It’s a sobering statistic — you can’t help but think about all those young lives cut short.

Thanks to the end of the draft, the story is quite different — but just as sad — in Iraq. After 2000 deaths (and 15,000 wounded), I added up all their individual ages to find out what the average was. It’s 30.

The whole Iraq war situation is depressing and a national disgrace, but this figure was particularly unwelcome on the week before my 30th birthday. I hope el Shubbito is excoriated in the judgement of history.

The sad thing is, despite the popularity of suggesting total withdrawal, I tend to agree with Kerry’s assessment/malapropism during the 2004 campaign — “you break it, you fix it” — we have to take responsibility for a mess of our own making there, and as such… we are probably (as Bernard predicted on RASSF) going to have to be entangled there for a long time to come. I hope those who support partial withdrawal are right.

And as long as we are there, where are all the people who supported the unelected President when he went to war? They should be signing up. And for those too old to serve, where are the war bond drives, so they can bear the cost in dollars? Chickenhawks, the lot of them.