Rummy, Fort Drum, and the paranoid tendencies of your average Canadian academic

Administration personnel continue to fan out and spread the "stay the course" message from the President's speech on Iraq last week.

Condoleeza Rice is in Europe, Dick Cheney spoke yesterday to troops at Fort Drum in New York State to troops assembled there, and Donald Rumsfeld gave this speech at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore on Monday, as reprinted in the Wall Street Journal today.

This speech is an excellent contextual piece in advance of Iraq's upcoming elections later this month.

Side note about Fort Drum: When studying Canadian foreign policy in 1997, my prof got to talking about the potential American reaction to a separate Quebec. His voice started cracking as he spoke about how there was an army outpost in New York state, named Fort Drum, that was located within an hour of the Canadian border.

According to this prof, the sole reason Fort Drum was built by the Americans was to establish a base for operations by the US Armed Forces to impose martial law on all of Canada in the event of a successful referendum on independence.

At this point, he completely lost it, broke down in tears, and had to halt the class to regain his composure.

Interestingly, this prof was also a failed NDP candidate.

Twice, I believe.