Whew. Long day in the old velo-barrel today. It was an even longer day for the Astana boys, who missed out on a stage win and lost more time to the heavy hitters in the Giro d’Italia. But the longest day of all may be the one spent in uniform, far from friends and family, in the company of hostile strangers. Thus we’ll raise a glass to the men and women of the U.S. armed forces tonight. May you all return safely and honorably to the Land of the Big PX. Your kittens must miss you.
Mad Blog Media 
Check out the letter to the editor from one of The Greatest Generation:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/22/AR2009052203472.html?referrer=facebook
On the treatment of prisoners, Mr. Cheney is wrong and the president is right [“In Dueling Speeches, a National Security Debate,” front page, May 22]. I speak as a combat veteran of World War II who carried a Browning automatic rifle in a squad that suffered over 100 percent casualties. I fought in Italy, France and Germany. I was shot at (and missed) many times. I returned fire (and didn’t) many times.
Often an enemy soldier would jump up with his hands in the air after he had wounded or killed one of your fellow soldiers — perhaps one you knew well.
You immediately became responsible for his welfare and, no matter how tough it was, you took your finger off the trigger. Don’t tell me we weren’t fighting terrorists. We liberated concentration camps where we saw things that would turn your stomach. Sometimes we had to defend those who ran the camps from skeletal prisoners who tried to beat them to death with boards. We hated them, but we were not like them, and we were not like Mr. Cheney. He’d have made a lousy soldier. But we already knew that.
JOHN CLAYTON SR.
Rockville, Maryland
Patrick and I have been discussing, after watching “Frost/Nixon,” who was worse, Cheney or Nixon? We have decided that Cheney is much worse. Patrick just said that “Cheney makes Dick Fuckin’ Nixon look like Mary Tyler Moore.”
Patrick has always had a way with words, Shannon. Which is why he is a journalist and I am not. In this case, though, the Mad Dog is being too polite.
Thanks for the link, Steve.