random thoughts? 

a good chess player would sacrifice a few items to gain others in the press to overpower the opponent. drawing down the opponents pieces leaves them with less 'ammo' in the goal of success. 

if there were a master player in our world, unseen, ukraine in one sense was/is a sacrificial goat, pawn perhaps, to drain the empire's resources. pieces, like, for example, ammo of all varieties, is limited in quantity and quality so that when you use all of your 155 shells as it were, in what is a large component of modern war, you start on the road towards disaster.

the neo-cons in charge have several large problems that affect us in a very negative fashion. they have no solid grasp of reality and they have no reverse gear or brakes. they evidently look across the potomac at the five sided fun house and think it capable of winning ww2 all over again. trouble is this is a new war style and we couldn't beat almost anyone these days. and we're puffing our chest out at several large opponents at once, none of whom we could best in our current 'conditions'.

things are gonna be getting much more curious and interesting in the upcoming months as i believe everyone can see and we're in the part of the 'world map' that used to be labeled: here be dragons, as we've no idea what we're getting into. i think it was napoleon who said: no plan survives the first shot being fired, or some such.