Host was great: anthropologist who has argued meaning of PNM with his Pentagon intel brother for months.

Fellow panelists okay and bad. Okay was American Muslim scholar who spent ten minutes of his 30 telling us how authentic he was because he's really Muslim, travels there a lot and appears on CNN a lot. It was weird, this need for self-validation, especially when all he said was that AIPAC is ruining the Middle East.

Bad was the Brit anthropologist from MIT who was the height of bankrupt comparisons to Vietnam.

I pointedly confronted him over his BS claim of 100k Iraqis dead (that specious Lancelet-published report discredited many times over) and made my usual points about all the "good" dead we let Saddam kill in the 1990s or all the Iraqis we killed with sanctions, but the anti-mil hatred was on thick display with this jerk.

Being Scot-Irish, I wanted to bury the hatchet... right between his eyes!

But I regress...

The panel was a bit of a failure, in my mind, because I was the only panelist to address the broad subject of "culture and security," which was fun for me because I briefed the back half of Blueprint instead of the usual geopol-heavy front half, so it was a first-time ever brief by me of about 15 Bradd Hayes slides. But the other two guys basically refought the Iraq war (actually, only one refought that, as the other was still stuck in Vietnam--befitting his years).

Too bad, because a serious discussion would have been nice. But this event was a lot like the NHK thing: because the Bush hatred is so strong, real conversation becomes impossible. It reminds me so much of the same dysfunctional political discourse of the late Clinton years (for opposite leanings, of course).

Ah, when I tire of discussing politics, it's getting bad!

Fascinating morning at DTRA (Defense Threat Reduction Agency, whose name, coincidentally, was taken in vain today at the Smithsonian). Great meet to discuss what Enterra brings to the mix. We see good work to be done there.

Of course, my snotty Brit anthro friend would disapprove (he had me at "unwashed masses" when referring to hopelessly stupid hick military recruits from the American Midwest; perhaps I am too culturally sensitive), but I guess I am forced to continue living in the real world, instead of Cambridge or Washington (2 places I know all too well)--where all the sophisticates live.

Now, another dinner meet with Steve DeAngelis and Kevin Billings of Enterra. Then up before dawn to NYC again.