Yeah, okay...

He loves baseball, and he did a great job running the baseball team in Texas (the Texas Rangers, was it?).

Kendall - Will you drop this hackneyed shit about "no Italian war heroes"? There were plenty of them, they just got no recognition whatsoever in Allied propaganda, and their country had too weak an economy to properly arm them...putting them in a wretched spot on the battlefield where they were usually outnumbered and always outgunned.

Here are some Italian heroes: the frogmen who penetrated Alexandria Harbour in their submersibles and sank 2 British battleships at their moorings, the soldiers who fought a virtually forgotten campaign with the British in central Africa, nearly winning it despite being basically cut off from supply, the bomber pilots who made the Royal Navy's life miserable flying the S.M.79 torpedo bombers in the Med (they sank a whole lot of Allied ships and suffered heavy losses doing it), the many Italian fighter pilots who became aces flying underarmed Italian aircraft against overwhelming odds from mid '42 on...

There were lots of Italian heroes. They did not lack courage, they lacked enough modern equipment, and they lacked an intelligent government, and they were in a war they should never have gotten into in the first place, but they were led by a glory-seeking idiot (Mussolini).

Not one of their names is remembered now outside of Italy...except by air history buffs such as myself.

(I am not Italian, I just know a lot about World War II, and I'm getting tired of this cliche being endlessly repeated.)

The oft-maligned French have also demonstrated tremendous courage under fire on more occasions than can be counted.

Yes, this is thread drift.

Back to the admirable qualities of George Bush...

- LH