(It is interesting that this is why we have so many Tibetans in Colorado, though — the CIA was training the resistance at Camp Hale. They found Colorado, and particularly my home area of the San Luis Valley, very much like home. So it’s entirely possible that the CIA had a big part in bringing the Buddhadharma to the West.)

I don’t have any problem with Mongolia and the others having more autonomy too.

The more I learn about a possible Free Tibet the less I like it. The Free Tibet Constitution (http://www.tibet.com/Govt/charter.html) is a veritable theocracy with a fig leaf of a democracy. I do not think that this fact is widely known or understood.

Mao’s troops overthrew the Dali Lama almost without a shot. The CIA had a lot to do with the subsequent violence that occurred several years later in Tibet.

In addition, Tibet is only one of several regions of China with similar claims for autonomy or independence. Mongolia, Turkmen and several others all have similar claims.

Not only does Free Tibet dispute the Tibetan-Chinese border, if memory serves me correctly, they also challenge the Tibetan-Mongolian border, the Tibetan-Indian border and the Tibetan-Burma border. The Chinese-Burma boarder area, the Turkmen and Mongolian territories have all been disputed for centuries.

China may be heavy handed, even brutal at times in handling these disputes. And that is not defensible either. But these disputes go back centuries. In fact, the last invasion of Tibet was repelled by the Chinese army not the Tibetan army.

The violence in Tibet earlier this year was in large part assaults on ethnic Hans by ethnic Tibetans. That was glossed over in most media as well.

The trend in China for a very long time is to increase local autonomy. Eventually I suspect and hope that China the trend will continue especially in Tibet.

Finally the root of most of these problems lies in the long history of China. Often, for extended periods, the central government was weak or non existent. Local and regional rulers such as the Dali Lama were the norm by default. This is just one of several periods in which a strong central government reasserted control over the whole country.

McCain has been saying that his beef was with Rumsfeld about how the war was prosecuted, not with Bush. McCain’s consistent argument has been that Bush got bad advice. Never has McCain said in any public record that Bush rejected good advice. How did you come to believe that Bush has rejected McCain’s advice on the war? Can you cite something specific?

Except that McCain has been saying that his beef with the prosecution of the war was with Rumsfeld, never with Bush. All along McCain has been saying that Bush had been getting bad advice. He has never said in any public record that Bush has rejected good advice.

So where did you find your assertion that he did?

Another possibility: McCain has recently come to a new understanding or decision about a strategy against bin Laden (who has been, I think it’s been clear for some years, rather marginalized – indeed, rendered irrelevant in a way that martyrdom, whether living or imprisoned, would not have accomplished – by the Bush administration).

But don’t let alternatives interfere with your world view. Causes indigestion.

Say anything and do anything just to get elected…good ol’ boy John McCain.

BTW, Marvin, this was an opinion piece, not a news piece. Literary license is a rhetorical device normally expected in commentary.

I am sure that Charlie would not object if you used it commenting here:>/