Oh: my stars. HALO 2 comes out tomorrow. Well, I'll buy it, but I won't play it yet. Better to spend the hour reading news and blogs about Fallujah than to play soldier on a TV screen. This is one of the big battles of the Iraq campaign; this is where the loop that began in Somalia is closed and welded shut.

Paul Harvey, of all people, noted that the hard phase of the battle would involve house-to-house combat, "just like Vietnam." Sigh. It's now the all-purpose metaphor. There could be a war on the moon with armies on dune buggies launching crossbows at each other, and someone would pronounce it a repeat of a disastrous battle in the Mekong Delta. But he'd be 108 years old, the last boomer, a brittle old survivor - not the Greatest Generation but the Generation that Grates, determined that any conflict should be seen through the prism of his youth with "White Rabbit" playing in the background. Times have changed. It's FLIR and Kid Rock now, I think. Stay tuned, and keep them in your thoughts.

The Marines, I mean.