During the cold war, you needed one of these to listen to government propaganda.

Back during the Cold War -- an era that increasingly seems as distant as the War of the Roses -- I used to listen to a lot of shortwave radio. This was a hobby that Nemo and I had in common, and he and I would sometimes talk about what we'd heard on Radio Moscow, the Soviet Union's English-language service.

Radio Moscow tried hard to sound like the BBC World Service, which was the gold standard of shortwave programming in those days. But even a couple of schoolboys -- which we were -- could tell the difference. We knew the BBC was balanced because speakers on the Beeb would often criticize their own government as well as the governments of the Eastern Bloc. Internal strife and policy disagreements were freely discussed. But Radio Moscow papered over internal divisions. Newscasters speaking flawless English would calmly state Kremlin policies as if they had been handed down from on high.

We were supposed to believe that the Soviet policies were fixed and historically inevitable. The only critical words spoken on Radio Moscow were for the decadent West. Had I not grown up in the United States, I might actually have believed what they said about America -- how the cities were broken, festering warrens of crime, how the peasants in America's farmland were starving and on the edge of revolt, how order in the United States could only be maintained with the National Guard.

Funny how the Bush administration is sounding more and more like Radio Moscow every day.

Nemo asked this question a few weeks ago: when will Dubya finally admit to the completely bloody obvious: namely, the fact that we have far too few troops in Iraq?

Apparently, a very oblique, Kremlinesque admission is finally being made. The administration has always passed the buck on this issue, claiming that no one one the ground in Iraq has ever complained about the number of troops. Now, less than a month after the election, we're being told that circumstances have changed since November 1 and that --surprise! -- more troops on the ground will be needed after all. But where, do you ask, will the troops come from?

To boost the current level, military commanders have considered extending the stay of more troops due to rotate out shortly, or accelerating the deployment of the 3rd Infantry Division, which is scheduled to start in January. But a third option -- drawing all or part of a brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division on emergency standby in the United States -- has emerged as increasingly likely....

If airborne units were rushed to Iraq, commanders here said, they likely would not be used in the offensive actions being planned, given their lack of heavy armor and their unfamiliarity with the targeted neighborhoods. Rather, their purpose would be to take over policing and other functions in Baghdad's International Zone, where American and top Iraqi government officials work. That would free locally seasoned units of the 1st Cavalry Division for such actions.

It should come as no surprise that the administration is taking the softest possible option here. No talk of a draft, and no talk of extending rotations. Just deploy the troops standing by in case of emergency and hope that no emergencies occur while they are tied up in Iraq.

But don't worry. This was the administration's plan all along.