As veterans, we tell ourselves it was all worth it. The grim butchery of war hovers out of sight and out of mind, an unwelcome guest at the dignified ceremonies. Instead, we talk of devotion to duty and noble sacrifice. We salute the soldiers at Omaha Beach, the sailors at Leyte Gulf, the airmen in the skies over Berlin and the Marines at the Chosin Reservoir, and we’re not wrong to do so.

The military thrives on tales of valor. In our volunteer armed forces, such stirring examples keep bringing young men and women through the recruiters’ door. As we used to say in the First Cavalry Division, they want to “live the legend.” In the military, we love our legends.

Here’s a legend that’s going around these days. In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq and toppled a dictator. We botched the follow-through, and a vicious insurgency erupted. Four years later, we surged in fresh troops, adopted improved counterinsurgency tactics and won the war. And then dithering American politicians squandered the gains. It’s a compelling story. But it’s just that — a story.

Today we are hearing some, including those in uniform, argue for a robust ground offensive against the Islamic State in Iraq. Air attacks aren’t enough, we’re told. Our Kurdish and Iraqi Army allies are weak and incompetent. Only another surge can win the fight against this dire threat. Really? If insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, I think we’re there (Retired Army Lieutenant General Daniel P Bolger in ‘The New York Times’).

He told the Confederation of British Industry: "Britain will only succeed in Europe if we are a strong economy. From your economic strength comes a lot of your power in international engagement. You never get anywhere in life unless you have a clear strategy and plan. Frankly, Britain's future in Europe matters to our country and it isn't working for us at the moment and that's why we need to make changes."

"[We want to] belong to a Europe that addresses people's concerns, including concerns about immigration. Simply standing here saying I will stay in Europe and stick with Europe come what may is not a strategy, is not a plan and that won't work."

On immigration, he added: "We need to have proper immigration control. We need to do more, both outside the European Union and, frankly, inside the European Union. But the flipside of the coin on immigration is a welfare system that rewards work and an education system that turns out people with the skills necessary to do the jobs that we are creating in our country today. No immigration policy will succeed unless it's accompanied by that welfare and that education reform as well."

It helps if you pronounce twiplets with a rasping lisp, like the celebrated Sixties comedian Freddie ‘Parrot Face’ Davies. Only then can you grasp the absurdity of this bizarre, mercenary arrangement, which is being hailed as an ‘amazing world first’.

This is the crazy world we live in today. Not so long ago a ‘world first’ for Britain would have been the invention of the jet engine or the hovercraft. Now it’s born-to-order test-tube twiplets with two gay fathers and three this-womb’s-for-hire mothers. The women will each be paid ‘expenses’ of £15,000 for their services and the happy couple will take delivery of the three babies between January and July next year.

Has no one stopped to consider what the twiplets are going to make of it when they get older? Shouldn’t have thought so for a moment. This is about what’s good for the adults, not for the children. It’s part of the depressing modern trend towards treating children as fashion accessories, like the latest handbag or breed of designer dog.

It follows outrage from Conservative MPs who see him as an arch-federalist who believes in an "ever-closer" European Union, who will make it more difficult for David Cameron to renegotiate Britain’s relationship with Brussels before holding an in-out referendum in 2017 over his appointment. The editorial, entitled “Jean-Claude Juncker Needs to Go”, describes Mr Juncker as a “bad choice for the job” who has been “foisted on the bloc's 28 national governments by a European Parliament eager to expand its powers.”

The editors of the financial wire say it is “becoming clear now just how poor a decision” the appointment of Mr Juncker was after details emerged of revelations of potentially illegal tax breaks given to multinationals in Luxembourg, of which he was prime minister for almost 20 years. The Bloomberg editorial continues: “Juncker's position as the head of the body investigating the tax practices he oversaw as prime minister is a clear conflict of interest."

“If we are not cautious, the EU could become the latest example that will be given as a failed utopian experiment. It is our duty to avert that,” Mr Orban writes. The Hungarian PM opines that it will be “suicidal” for Europe to renounce the national roots of its member states and urged the different countries to be more active within EU’s work. Hungary, he adds, would not want Europe to be governed by a “gigantic bureaucratic central institution”. “The peoples in Europe are its reality, and the United States of Europe is a utopia,” Mr Orban explains.

On Monday, Egypt’s most dangerous militant group, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, also pledged obedience to the organization that calls itself the Islamic State, becoming its first significant international affiliate in the bet that the link will provide new money, weapons and recruits to battle the government in Cairo.

The affiliation could pull the militant group away from its current, almost exclusive focus on attacking Egyptian military and security forces toward the Islamic State’s indiscriminate mass killings of civilians. The pledge alone could undermine the government’s efforts to win the trust of Western tourists, a vital source of hard currency.

The decision injects the Islamic State into the most populous and historically most influential Arab nation, a milestone weeks into an American-led bombing campaign against its strongholds in Syria and Iraq. The endorsement is a major victory for the Islamic State in its rivalry with Al Qaeda — a group with deep Egyptian roots — and could now help recruit fighters and affiliates far beyond Egypt.

“Modern eugenic aspirations are not about the draconian top-down measures promoted by the Nazis and their ilk. Instead of being driven by a desire to "improve" the species, new eugenics is driven by our personal desire to be as healthy, intelligent and fit as possible - and for the opportunity of our children to be so as well. And that's not something that should be restricted lightly.”

However, eugenics is also being touted in the peer-reviewed journals as well. The latest addition to a burgeoning literature, from a rising Oxford philosophy student, Benjamin Meir Jacobs, arguing in the Journal of Medical Ethics that parents have an “obligation to choose a healthier child” based on a moral imperative to avoid creating situations of “harm”. Jacobs argues that we are morally obliged to select children without disabilities if we have such a choice (which is now available through preimplantation genetic diagnosis and IVF).

First Citigroup revised its earnings down to $0.88 per share from $1.07 per share to add $600 million to its legal reserves. Then JPMorgan Chase also disclosed that US and UK regulators were conducting criminal (the Department of Justice is in there) and civil probes into its Forex trading operations. Of course, it's cooperating, but it has no idea how much it could lose in such a settlement — maybe nothing, maybe $6 billion.

Finally, on Thursday after the closing bell, Bank of America followed Citi and revised its earnings down by $400 million, adding that to its legal reserves to deal with whatever comes of the probe.

So here's what we know about the investigation: Barclays, HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland Group, UBS, Citigroup, JPMorgan, and Bank of America are all involved. The UK banks will take about $1.8 billion of fines for this, but regulators in the US haven't finished negotiating.

Against this backdrop, media revelations have disclosed a secret correspondence between the Obama White House and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — kept even from Congressional leaders and possibly America’s closest allies, including Israel. As the world ponders Iran’s dash to enrich more kilograms of uranium, the underlying concern is not so much about the enrichment process itself, but the end product: a nuclear warhead. Iran has been developing its warhead for some sixteen years. That design is nearly perfected.