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The World Bank released a report Wednesday entitled Global Economic Prospects 2008: Technology Diffusion in the Developing World. As the name implies, the report details what kind of technical progress developing countries are making—how many people have computers, access to the Internet, that kind of thing. The report is quite long, so I'm going to focus on a few key points:

The number of people living in absolute poverty in developing countries has decreased from 29 percent in 1990 to 18 percent in 2004. This is one of the upsides of globalization and the spread of technology. As technology spreads to poor countries, incomes grow. Yet as the World Bank acknowledges, it's very difficult to quantitatively prove a relationship between technology and income growth, so the causation here is murky.

There is a large technology gap between the rich and poor. This is one of the downsides of globalization. A good example of this phenomenon is India. India has a robust high-tech industry concentrated in its cities. However, in poorer rural areas less than 10 percent of people have access to a telephone let alone a computer, according to the Bank's own figures. Such stratification is dangerous and becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Look at income growth in the United States over the last few decades: the gap between the rich and the poor has grown dramatically. Once this separation starts, it's hard to stop.

Developing countries have difficulty absorbing new technologies and are incapable of innovations. Because of low literacy rates and infrastructure shortcomings in poor rural areas, poor countries have difficulty embracing technology. For instance, computers are great, but are pretty worthless if the person trying to use one can't read. And cell phones are a great way to connect people, but many rural areas in developing countries don't get coverage. These difficulties embracing basic technology make it impossible to innovate.

The spread of technology is inevitable, and it does have enormous benefits. But the second and third points listed above have dangerous implications. Once the fortunes of rich and poor begin to diverge, the trend is nearly impossible to reverse. And problems in developing countries make it very difficult to get technology into the hands of the poor. Hundreds of millions of people are being dug into a technological hole that they can't emerge from. They're being left behind by the global economy.

Last June, during an evening newscast in Prague, a shot of the Krkonose Mountains in Bohemia was suddenly filled with a bright yellow light. When the light faded, a mushroom cloud was visible. A nuclear weapon had been detonated in the Czech countryside. Panicked viewers phoned state-owned CT2, the station which aired the image, asking if nuclear war had begun.

The shot was, of course, a fake. It was a prank, planted into the shot by Ztohoven, a Prague-based artists collective. The group wanted to show how easily images can be manipulated. And they succeeded. Take a look at the video:

The Czech government didn't find the prank funny. Six members of the group are now on trial and face up to three years in prison for spreading false information.

DMITRY KOSTYUKOV/AFP/Getty Images

In the latest issue of FP, I wrote (subscription required) about the efforts of ICANN, the group that gives out Internet domain names, to "internationalize" the Web. Starting this year, ICANN will allow users to use non-Roman characters in top level domain names. For example, Arabic-speaking users will no longer have to end Web addresses in ".com"—they can register the last part of their Web address in their own native language.

Tina Dam, the executive director at ICANN who is in charge of the change, said that part of the reason for the switch was fears that China could "split the root," or create a second Internet that only recognizes Chinese characters. This would allow the Chinese government to control what people see. If, for instance, a Chinese user tried to access an FP article on censorship in China, the government could direct them to a completely different site.

Dam said she was confident the change would appease the Chinese. But ICANN now has a problem with Russia. Despite ICANN's efforts to incorporate Russian alphabet characters into Web addresses (it is one of 11 sets of characters the group is incorporating), Moscow is pushing for the creation of an Internet that recognizes only Cyrillic characters. Expert warnings echo those voiced about a Chinese Internet: increased international isolation and more government censorship of the Web. Given the wide control the Kremlin already has over media in Russia and its unwillingness to play nice with pretty much anyone these days, a separate Russian Internet might be just as dangerous a prospect as a separate Chinese one.

VLADIMIR RODIONOV/AFP/Getty Images

Sometimes, a tree is not just a tree.

In the Moldovan capital of Chisinau, the pro-Russia communist President Vladimir Voronin (shown at left with Russian President Vladimir Putin) removed a Christmas tree put up by pro-Europe Mayor Dorin Chirtoaca, an advocate for strong ties with neighbor and new EU member Romania. Voronin said the tree should not be displayed until after the New Year, the traditional time for Russian Orthodox. But Chirtoaca fought to display the tree at a traditionally European time.

In a victory for the pro-European mayor, a Christmas tree now stands in Chisinau, about 300 meters from government buildings. But it raises the larger question encountered by members of the Commonwealth of Independent States during this holiday season: Are they to be Russian and abandon the freedoms of the EU, or tilt toward Europe and risk falling victim to the wrath of Putin?

Photo: JOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images

Last, week, the European Central Bank (ECB), the Federal Reserve and other central banks flooded markets with cash. Then on Tuesday, the ECB infused another $500 billion into the market.

The banks are trying to alleviate a credit crunch and restore confidence in world markets after the fallout from the subprime mortgage market spread to the wider economy earlier this year. On its face, that's a good thing. But if you ask me, this needs to stop. Why? The market needs to correct itself. The central banks have to come to terms with the fact that a recession is possible if not likely no matter what they do. Here are a few reasons to let the markets be:

Wall Street is not going to be happy not matter how much cash is infused or how low interests rates go. The Fed's rate cut on Dec. 12 is the perfect example of how spoiled Wall Street has become. It gets a cut, and it trades the market down 300 points because it wasn't big enough. This follows an autumn during which the market traded up irrationally on hopes of a rate cut. Wall Street needs to start expecting that the good times it has had over the last few years can't last forever.

As interest rates go down, chances of inflation go up. Despite news that inflation was flat in November, there is a real risk that prices could rise if interests rates keep getting cut and if oil prices stay high. The Fed acknowledged this risk in a statement accompanying its latest cut. And the Fed apparently had no problem with subprime borrowing when the market was up. It didn't act then. It shouldn't act now.

Buyer beware. Investors bet on instruments backed by subprime mortgages because they were risky; they could make a lot of money or lose a lot of money. For a while, they made buckets of money. Now, they're losing it. It is not the job of central banks to bail out that made bad investments.

Buyer beware II. The same principle applies on the homeowner side, apart from those who were suckered into these kinds of loans (and now it looks like the right kind of protections are being put in place). Many subprime borrowers were homeowners who wanted to upgrade to a bigger house or borrow against the value of their house. They took out these loans betting that the value of their homes would continue to rise. When housing prices started to plateau and eventually decrease, these owners got stuck with payments they couldn't make. Others should not have to pay for their mistakes.

Recessions are painful, but, just like good times, they don't last forever. They're an ordinary part of the market cycle. The actions by the ECB and Fed are simply prolonging the inevitable, whether it be a recession or simply a brief correction. Either way, it's time to let the market take its natural course.

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The dollar is making a comeback! In the past 5 days, it's risen 1.5 percent against the euro—1 euro now equals $1.4432. It's also up against the pound and the yen.

If you're a U.S. citizen traveling abroad or a European company that relies primarily on exports to generate revenue, this is welcome news. But as this graph shows, the dollar is still historically weak.

There are a lot of people freaking out about the health of the dollar. However, as Thomas Palley points out in this week's Web Exclusive, despite being weak, the dollar isn't going anywhere. And a pint of beer in England is still going to cost you $12.

South Koreans take Christmas very seriously, apparently:

CHUNG SUN JUN/Getty Images

South Koreans dressed in Santa Claus take a written exam in a Santa Claus School class for the Christmas holiday season at the Everland amusement park in the Seoul suburb of Yongin, South Korea. Christmas has become increasingly popular over the years in South Korea.

Here's more:

CHUNG SUN JUN/Getty Images

CHUNG SUN JUN/Getty Images

Not to sound like Scrooge, but these photos are kind of terrifying.

ANDREAS SOLARO/AFP/Getty Images

European attitudes toward immigrants from outside of the continent are well known — they're generally not liked. But in recent months, a new hostile sentiment has been growing toward Europe's internal immigrants. Under the EU's free movement policy, any citizen of an EU member state can pick up and move to any other member state. National borders don't matter. Anyone who lives in an EU country is a citizen of Europe. So as the EU has grown, older member states like England and Italy have seen a large influx of people from former Soviet bloc countries. These immigrants generally only speak their native language, so assimilation has been difficult.

The debate over how to deal with these immigrants, until recently, was mainly civil. Now, in Italy, it's openly hostile. Following the October murder of an Italian woman by a Romanian immigrant, Italy's Senate approved a law on Thursday that would allow them to deport non-native EU citizens. The bill still has to be approved by the lower house, but if it passes, it would give Italy the power to expel anyone, thus contradicting the free movement policy.

The English haven't gone that far, but their patience with non-native speakers is waning. Local councils are being instructed to spend less on translating signs and other materials into the languages of local immigrants. Instead, they are being advised to spend on English classes — a stance that is not openly hostile, yet not exactly welcoming.

Controversies over internal immigration raise an important issue regarding the future of the EU: the fear that national identities could be lost. What does it mean to be Italian if anyone can live in Italy? Do you have to speak English to be English? A common currency and trade policy and open borders are great, but they aren't conducive to preserving how individual nations define themselves.

Photo: ETIENNE ANSOTTE/AFP/Getty Images;
modified by FP

Relations between the United States and members of the European Union, by all accounts, have improved in recent years. French President Nicolas Sarkozy, in his recent speech to Congress, professed his outright "love" for America. Following Sarko's speech, President Bush and German Chancellor Angela Merkel had what was by most accounts an amicable meeting in Crawford. And relations with British PM Gordon Brown, while not as warm as those Bush had with former PM Tony Blair, are progressing.

Most attribute the improvement in U.S./Euro relations to Bush's departure from his "with us or against us" attitude surrounding the Iraq war. It also doesn't hurt that Gerhard Schröder and Jacques Chirac—no fans of the U.S. president—are no longer around.

But other, deeper factors might be at work. A new survey from the German Marshall Fund of the United States, released Wednesday morning, finds that majorities in America and Europe share many of the same economic worries—immigration, currency fluctuations, fear of the Chinese economy, and job losses due to globalization—and would "support a new initiative aimed at deepening transatlantic trade and investment." Interestingly, (non-British) Europeans feel even more threatened by China's rise than Americans do.

While we should always be wary of polls that support an organization's raison d'être, I do wonder what such an "initiative" would look like. Most likely, it would mean an expansion of existing trade and investment relationships—probably nothing as grandiose as Mitt Romney's proposal for a "Reagan Zone of Economic Freedom." But doesn't this also, on some level, sound like those polled favor a transatlantic partnership similar to the European Union? A U.S./EU trading block, perhaps?

I know this sounds far-fetched, and admittedly it is. But the European Union evolved into a trading block for many of same reasons cited by those polled: immigration, currency, competitiveness, and weak individual economies. Decades from now, when China has the most powerful economy in the world, will a similar union between the United States and Europe be the only way to stay competitive? Like I said, far-fetched. But 60 years ago, so was the European Union.

CHIP SOMODEVILLA/Getty Images News

On Wednesday evening at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, U.S. National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley spoke broadly about freedom and the Middle East. His prepared remarks (pdf) weren't too surprising—the key point was that the time is right to push for peace because Israel is becoming more receptive to the idea of a Palestinian state, the Palestinians are being more cooperative, and Arab states are engaging in the debate.

Hadley did go off script a bit during the Q&A session, though. A SAIS student asked a question about why some Arabic states would support democracy in Iraq when those states are not democracies themselves. Hadley's answer was pretty standard until he began taking about elections in Iran. But Hadley replaced the "l" in elections with an "r" and instead began to speak about Iranian erections (The audio is here. Right click and save as. It's around the 38:30 mark).

A harmless slip of the tongue? An attempt to throw off Tehran's ruling mullahs, who have made it clear that they're uncomfortable with sexuality? You decide.

TORU YAMANAKA/AFP/Getty Iamges

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet is so hot right now. Not only is she one of the world's most eligible leaders, David Rieff in this coming Sunday's New York Times Magazine anoints her the leader of a new generation of female heads of state in South America.

But unlike Argentina's President-elect Cristina Fernández de Kirchner or former Argentine President Isabel Perón (or Hillary Clinton, for that matter), Bachelet did not have a powerful husband to grease the political wheels on her way into office. As Rieff puts it, she is "the first woman in South America who can be said to have earned the title on her own merits."

So she's ambitious. And she's tough, having survived interrogation and torture by former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet's secret police in the 1970s. And she's a doctor by training, so she's smart.

Think you have a shot at her? It's doubtful—right now, she's got her hands full with Wednesday's earthquakes and Thursdays aftershocks. But check out this week's List to find out more about her and other eligible world leaders.

MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images

U.S. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's pessimistic testimony to Congress on Thursday has caused increased handwringing around the world, with new reports questioning whether the subprime fallout will lead to a worldwide recession. The general consensus is no — the damage will be contained to the housing sector and hedge funds, which irresponsibly invested in subprime.

But what if subprime's use were actually more widespread? Some mutual funds have acknowledged small investments in the funds. This isn't a big deal, as some risk is to be expected in those vehicles. But what about money-market funds, where most personal savings are invested? They offer a low rate of return and are considered one of the safest investment. But according to a recent Bloomberg article, money-market fund managers have invested $11 billion in subprime, including managers at Bank of America and Morgan Stanley. In other words, about $11 billion worth of personal savings are at risk.

In the grand scheme of things, $11 billion is a drop in the bucket. But as we've seen over the last few months, small problems like this tend to be more widespread, so it's likely more money-market funds will be forced to acknowledge subprime investments, and peoples' savings, which are already at historic lows, could disappear. If this happens, recession would be inevitable, and depression a real possibility.

SONNY TUMBELAKA/AFP/Getty Images

Soaring HIV/AIDS infection rates and sexual violence have forced African nations to get creative with condoms. You've got Pronto condoms, which can be put on in less than one second, before "the mood is halfway out the window." And then there's the anti-rape condom, blogged about here at Passport, which has "razor-sharp teeth [that] fasten on the attacker's penis if he attempts penetration."

Now, in Ethiopia, where HIV/AIDS infection rates are above 2 percent, a U.S. charity has developed a coffee-flavored condom. DKT International came up with the prophylactic — which supposedly tastes like a macchiato — after receiving complaints about the smell and taste of traditional latex condoms. Despite criticism from the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, in September more than 300,000 of the condoms were sold at 10 cents a piece.

The condoms have also tapped into Ethiopian nationalism, as coffee was supposedly invented there. As one university student put it, "It is about time to use an Ethiopian flavor for beautiful Ethiopian girls."

DKT has developed similar products for other parts of the world. In China, they offer condoms that smell and taste like sweetcorn. In Indonesia, they offer a condom that smells like the durian fruit (which, incidentally, absolutely stinks, and is probably the last thing anyone would want to smell before business time).

What's next? Pilsner-flavored condoms in the Czech Republic? Plantain in the tropics? But hey, if it gets more people to have safe sex, why not?

YOSHIKAZU TSUNO/AFP/Getty Images

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Christopher Hill, speaking in Seoul on Friday, had this to say about sanctions levied against North Korea for its nuclear test last year:

The sanctions are there until the DPRK (North Korea) gets out of the nuclear business. That is when they ought to be revisited.

Taken at face value, Hill's comments are an enormous hedge on the agreement with the North. The sanctions will stay in place at least until North Korea's nuclear program no longer exists—a process that could take years. A U.S. team is beginning to disable North Korea's Yongbyon reactor today and is expected to complete its work by the end of 2007, but "gets out of the nuclear" business is a broad phrase that could be interpreted any number of ways.

There is also some interesting subtext to Hill's quote. In early September, Israel destroyed an alleged Syrian nuclear facility that was thought to have been built with North Korean help. It looked to many like the North Koreans were negotiating with Hill in bad faith, threatening to torpedo the six-party talks. But anonymous Bush administration officials told the New York Times last week that the Syrian site had existed as early as 2003; hence, cooperation between Syria and North Korea existed long before the current diplomatic breakthrough with Pyongyang. As the Times' William J. Broad and Mark Mazzetti put it:

If North Korea started its Syrian aid long ago, the [Bush administration] officials could argue that the assistance was historical, not current, and that diplomacy should move ahead.

This hasn't been enough to ease concerns that the United States is treating Pyongyang with kid gloves. Hill's comments might be an attempt to assuage critics of the North Korea deal. First, they make clear to North Korea that providing nuclear assistance of any kind would violate the deal. Second, Hill implies that sanctions will not go away until Pyongyang's nuclear program is completely nonexistent—and even then, the sanctions will merely be "revisited," not lifted automatically. Whether this will be enough to reassure those who believe the United States is taking it easy on North Korea is unclear. I get the sense that some people in the U.S. government won't be happy until the deal with North Korea is dead and buried.

Since gathering on Turkey's border with northern Iraq last week, Turkish troops have been mounting small-scale attacks against the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) inside Iraqi borders. These attacks have reportedly consisted of Turkish special forces with the support of helicopter gunships, targeting PKK bases.

The United States has urged Turkey to back down. Kurdish officials, on the other hand, have said little. This is likely because they know any large-scale attack by Turkey is likely to be ineffective. Take a look at this map, published recently in the New York Times. Because of the rocky terrain, it would be nearly impossible for Turkey to mount a successful campaign to destroy the PKK. There are simply too many places to hide (click for the full map):

When I looked at this map for the first time, I was immediately reminded of the Tora Bora region in Afghanistan (check out the similarities between this map of Tora Bora and the Times map—also, check out Google Earth's shot of Tora Bora, and compare with a shot of the Turkish/Iraqi border). U.S. troops had Osama bin Laden cornered there in late 2001, but Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld refused to send troops in. Why? Because he believed the area was too mountainous for any attack to be effective. Instead, Rumsfeld, perhaps citing the lessons learned during the Afghan war with the Soviets, relied on the Northern Alliance to mount the ground assault with U.S. air support, and the al Qaeda leader eventually escaped. Rumsfeld's decision was a controversial one, and who knows if U.S. troops would have found bin Laden. But it is a textbook example of how difficult it is to achieve a combat objective on rocky land. The Turks ought to take note.

Just in time for those Halloween goodie bags, the November/December issue of Foreign Policy is on newsstands now. Considering the cover shot of a menacing George W. Bush, you might assume FP is taking a shot at the U.S. president for his failed Iraq policy. You'd be mistaken—the blame for Iraq's failure and the broader war on terrorism actually lies with the American people.

Or so argues Alasdair Roberts. Roberts, a professor at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, writes in his provocative cover essay, "The War We Deserve," that "The American public at large is more deeply implicated in the design and execution of the war on terror than it is comfortable to admit." Over the past six years, Roberts complains, "Americans have remained largely unshaken in the commitment to a political philosophy that demands much from its government but asks little of its citizens."

Also in this issue: Pace Nas, hip-hop is not dead. In fact, it's alive and well in places everywhere from Ghana to Shanghai and has emerged as a powerful form of global communication, Jeff Chang writes. And if globalization is your thing, check out the seventh FP/A.T. Kearney Globalization Index, where you can find out why many analysts are worried that the ties that bind today's "flat world" may be increasingly fragile. (To say nothing of the meth epidemic sweeping the globe.)

Elsewhere, FP editor in chief Moisés Naím takes a look at what will happen when activism meets communism at next summer's Beijing Olympics; the Economist's Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran challenges conventional thinking on oil; Brian Winter of USA Today details the forces behind the meteoric rise of Mexico's mysterious Carlos Slim; and FP explains how other billionaires around the world strike it rich thanks to globalization. [It was tempting to title that last piece "I Am a Billionaire (And So Can You!)," but we thought better of the idea. -Ed.] To read most of these fine articles, you'll need to be a subscriber to FP. At just $25 bucks for two years of award-winning content, what are you waiting for? Subscribe now.

At a NATO summit in the Netherlands Thursday, Russia rejected a new U.S. proposal that would allow a Russian presence at a planned missile defense site in the Czech Republic. This follows a week in which U.S. missile defense policy became increasingly unclear. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Tuesday the United States could delay deployment of the system until there is proof of a missile threat from Iran. Then, later that day, President Bush said a missile shield was urgently needed, a seeming contradiction the administration has yet to clarify. I asked Michael O'Hanlon, a national security expert at the Brookings Institution, for his take:

For those who pooh-pooh Iran's bluster, it is important to remember that its weaponry has on average killed one to two Americans a day in Iraq over the last couple years. It has not favored a particular group out of ideology; it has even given weaponry to al Qaeda, in order to maximize its leverage with all parties.

Giving in to Russian bullying would not be wise. Russia is hyping the capabilities of a small proposed U.S. system. Changing our policy in response would be to reward Moscow for playing a game of divide and conquer within NATO.

But there are reasons not to hurry—and not to have decisions made when George Bush and Vladimir Putin run their respective governments. The defensive technology is not ready. Iran's offensive capabilities do not yet exist; nor do its nuclear weapons that would presumably someday be placed atop the missiles. Right now, pushing ahead with the deployment would reinforce the image of American unilateralism, stoke bad relations between the West and Russia, and deny NATO a proper role in the process.

The next U.S. president should make it clear that a European missile defense site will be an American priority, assuming NATO agrees and assents. But he or she should work with Russia on where to put defensive capabilities and when to deploy them, and more generally try to make this a cooperative venture.

The bottom line is that George Bush is not the right person to commit to deploy this system. But his successor should.

KEVIN FRAYER/AFP/Getty Images

If there's one consensus ahead of the U.S.-sponsored Middle East peace talks in Annapolis, Maryland, it's that their chances of failure are rapidly increasing. A number of reports this week have cited the repeated failures of Israel and Palestine to make any inroads, including the inability of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to come together on a joint statement on principles to guide the talks.

And it's unlikely that any progress will be made before the talks, scheduled for late next month. Or is it early December? As of now, the two sides can't agree on anything. For instance, Abbas said earlier this week he wants Lebanon and Syria to participate in the talks, although Olmert has ruled this out in an attempt to focus the talks on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

Internal divisions also hinder prospects for progress. Olmert lacks credibility among Israelis and therefore has scant support to make any real concessions. Abbas faces opposition from Hamas, who took the Gaza Strip earlier this year in what Abbas called an "illegitimate coup." So even if Israeli and Palestinian negotiators can come to a consensus, it's not likely they'll be able to sell it to their respective streets.

This all raises the question: Is it time to call off the talks? Is no progress better than failed progress? This is a sentiment that is becoming increasingly popular in Palestine, as many believe failure would invite new violence.  According to one Palestinian official:

We can live without a conference but we can't live with a conference that fails. It will be good not just for Hamas, but for al-Qaeda too.

TEH ENG KOON/AFP/Getty Images

China's Communist Congress ended today with no real surprises. President Hu Jintao announced that Xi Jinping, chief of Shanghai, and Li Keqiang, head of the Liaoning province in northeast China, were appointed to the nine-member Standing Committee of the Politburo, the country's most powerful political body. Xi and Li are now expected to replace Hu and Premier Wen Jiabao, although neither Hu or Wen are expected to leave office soon (and nobody really knows yet whether Xi or Li will get the top job). In introducing China's next generation of leaders, Hu had this to say:

Comrades Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang are two quite young comrades.

That's not exactly heaping praise on the pair (To be fair, they are "quite young," relatively speaking Xi is 54; Li, 52). And it wasn't at all surprising, as they were widely predicted to be promoted.

So what else happened during the congress? Tune in tomorrow, when Cheng Li of the Brookings Institution, one of the world's top scholars on high-level Chinese politics, explains what really happened—and what to expect over the next few years—in a Web exclusive for FP.

JOHN MOORE/Getty Images News

A recent report out of Germany indicates that alcohol abuse by elite German soldiers in Afghanistan is rampant. Members of Germany's Kommando Spezialkräfte openly flout alcohol restrictions, drinking heavily and trading booze with U.S. troops for snippets of intelligence and helicopter rides, according to Der Spiegel. One U.S. soldier says beer is a "currency ... To us, the German beer supplies were Big Rock Candy."

And drinking is not limited to rank and file soldiers. The behavior of a drunken German colonel during mission briefings in Kandahar, for instance, prompted complaints from U.S. military officials.

The Germans aren't the only ones with substance-abuse problems. A report in the New York Times earlier this year found that "alcohol- and drug-related charges were involved in more than a third of all Army criminal prosecutions of soldiers" in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It's easy to dismiss the drinking as "boys will be boys" behavior. And you can't blame soldiers for having a drink or two, considering what they go through each day.

But if history is any guide, the heavy drinking could indicate low morale. During Vietnam, substance abuse was widespread and tied to frustration with progress and battlefield stress. This was also the case for the Soviet Union during its occupation of Afghanistan. Facing extended deployments, up to 50 percent of Red Army troops turned to drugs.

Last month, I attended a discussion on the state of the Iraq war. One panelist said the troops still believed in the fight because, unlike Vietnam, they had not yet turned to drugs or alcohol. Unfortunately, these reports suggest otherwise.