All across the United States, the call-up of reservists and National Guard members is carving big holes in the towns and cities they leave behind. The heartache of families separating, a familiar ritual of military service, is being compounded by the community upheaval associated with a second major mobilization of citizen soldiers in as many years. Doctors. Nurses. Police officers. Firefighters. Lawyers. Teachers. Clerks. Cashiers. Mechanics. Truck drivers. Even mayors and school board members. All going or gone.

This is the sentence that is provided for by our statutes. It is a fair and a just sentence. It is a righteous sentence. Let me explain this to you. We are not afraid of any of your terrorist co-conspirators, Mr. Reid. We are Americans. We have been through the fire before. There is all too much war talk here. And I say that to everyone with the utmost respect. Here in this court where we deal with individuals as individuals, and care for individuals as individuals, as human beings we reach out for justice. You are not an enemy combatant. You are a terrorist. You are not a soldier in any war. You are a terrorist. To give you that reference, to call you a soldier gives you far too much stature. Whether it is the officers of government who do it or your attorney who does it, or that happens to be your view, you are a terrorist. And we do not negotiate with terrorists. We do not treat with terrorists. We do not sign documents with terrorists. We hunt them down one by one and bring them to justice... See that flag, Mr. Reid? That's the flag of the United States of America. That flag will fly there long after this is all forgotten. That flag still stands for freedom. You know it always will. Custody, Mr. Officer. Stand him down.

But in 1994 we really thought the IAEA had eradicated their nuclear program. And the IAEA really thought that they'd eradicated their nuclear program. And they were telling us they'd eradicated their nuclear program. And Khidhir Hamza comes out and says 'No, the nuclear program in 1994 was bigger than it had ever been before.' In point of fact the Iraqis had found all kinds of ways to hide what they were doing. It introduced inefficiencies in what they were doing. For example, they talk about these short track cascades. Normally the cascade is enormous. The way we do it it's three football fields long. That's the most efficient way to do it. The Iraqis figured out ways to do short cascades, which didn't require as much energy, which weren't as big and therefore were much more easily concealed. They were more inefficient. They didn't produce the enriched uranium nearly as well. But nevertheless they were able to do it.

We in Europe have a relationship with the United States which has stood the test of time. Thanks in large part to American bravery, generosity and far-sightedness, Europe was set free from the two forms of tyranny that devastated our continent in the 20th century: Nazism and Communism. Thanks, too, to the continued cooperation between Europe and the United States we have managed to guarantee peace and freedom on our continent. The transatlantic relationship must not become a casualty of the current Iraqi regime’s persistent attempts to threaten world security.

The combination of weapons of mass destruction and terrorism is a threat of incalculable consequences. It is one at which all of us should feel concerned. Resolution 1441 is Saddam Hussein’s last chance to disarm using peaceful means. The opportunity to avoid greater confrontation rests with him.

When a Labour MP shouted "Who’s next?" at him, he retorted that after Iraq, "yes, through the UN we have to confront North Korea about its nuclear programme." Another MP barked "Where does it stop?" bringing the response: "We stop when the threat to our country is fully and properly dealt with."

At the Al-Zahawi teahouse in Baghdad's old quarter, a ramshackle building where men gab over games of backgammon and dominoes, a trio of retired teachers who heard excerpts of Bush's address this morning said they were unconvinced by his arguments. "He claims we have all of these weapons," said Atta Ahmed, 65, a potbellied former math instructor. "Why doesn't he show the evidence?"

Bush was only repeating here what the Iraqis themselves have said, according to press reports. According to a Kuwaiti newspaper story from last summer, in a June 2002 meeting among Hussein, his two sons and other members of his inner circle of advisors, Ali Hasan al-Majid, a Saddam cousin who possesses a diabolical expertise in chemical warfare, asked "has the time not come to take the fight to their own homes in America? They wanted this to be a war on all fronts, so let it be a war on all fronts and using all weapons and means." Another referred to Iraqis becoming "human bombs in the thousands, willing to blow up America in particular," and yet another suggested that "If bin Laden truly did carry out the September attacks as they claim, then as Allah is my witness, we will prove to them that what happened in September is a picnic compared to the wrath of Saddam Hussein."

Before September the 11th, many in the world believed that Saddam Hussein could be contained. But chemical agents, lethal viruses and shadowy terrorist networks are not easily contained. Imagine those 19 hijackers with other weapons and other plans, this time armed by Saddam Hussein. It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known.

Paragraph 9 of resolution 1441 (2002) states that this cooperation shall be "active". It is not enough to open doors. Inspection is not a game of "catch as catch can". Rather, as I noted, it is a process of verification for the purpose of creating confidence. It is not built upon the premise of trust. Rather, it is designed to lead to trust, if there is both openness to the inspectors and action to present them with items to destroy or credible evidence about the absence of any such items.

I might further mention that inspectors have found at another site a laboratory quantity of thiodiglycol, a mustard gas precursor.

chemicals that have little or no use except as chemical warfare agents or for the development, production or acquisition of chemical weapons, or which have been used by Iraq as essential precursors for chemical weapons and are, therefore, prohibited to Iraq, save under the procedure for special exceptions provided for in paragraph 32 of the Plan.

Iraq shall not retain, use, transfer, develop, produce, store, import or otherwise acquire these chemicals. Should Iraq require any chemical specified in list B of annex II, it shall submit a request to the Special Commission specifying precisely the chemical and the quantities required, the site or facility where it is to be used and the purpose of its use. The Special Commission will examine and decide on the request and establish the special arrangements it considers consistent with resolution 687 (1991).

I was discussing the threat Iraq poses and the possibility of war with my uncle. He's a fairly reasonable guy, he's middle of the road on most political issues. But recently he's been prone to making outlandish and vicious attacks on the president and "Bush's War". So after an hour of arguing, I asked my uncle point-blank: "Would you have a problem with this president and his policies and the war in Iraq if his name was George Smith and not George Bush, son of a president and former oil tycoon?" His answer: "Probably not." I'd be willing to bet my uncle isn't the only person who thinks like this.

Since breezy theories are all the rage among the punditocracy these days (your slap at the "intelligentsia" is amusing, given that almost all political and media elites throw themselves at Bush's feet) try this on for size: Those who support Bush, who cram their theories to fit a man of his stature, are simply afraid to admit to any flaw in him because it will bring the whole house of cards tumbling down. So you invent a jut-jawed man of action, determined and resolute with a clear vision of world harmony. But the whispering in your head won't stop: he's a vile and craven little momma's boy, a snooty insider trader and coward who deserted his National Guard post while the great unwashed were still dying in Vietnam, and who rushed off to save his candy ass on September 11 and invented a lie about Air Force one being a target while the great unwashed were once again dying under the rubble. But you're too damned afraid to admit it. Sick of it? Too bad.

Why is there now no last testimonial to an era of history, to a civilisation about to be crushed and transformed utterly, to a society that, despite its drawbacks and weaknesses, nevertheless goes on functioning? Arab babies are born every hour, children go to school, men and women marry and work and have children, they play and laugh and eat, they are sad, they suffer illness and death. There is love and companionship, friendship and excitement. Yes, Arabs are repressed and misruled, terribly misruled, but they manage to go on with the business of living despite everything.

Iraqis, we are told by the Iraqi dissidents, will welcome their liberation, and perhaps forget entirely about their past sufferings. Perhaps.

Speaking at Querna, on the southern tip of Iraq, where the Euphrates and Tigris meet and Adam’s tree is said to mark the Garden of Eden, [broadcaster] Mr Cruickshank said: "An act of war visited on these people would not just be a catastrophe for history and wreck an ancient culture but bestir these peaceful people into a terrible fury."

For the traditional left, said Emmanuele Ottolinghi, a research fellow at the Middle East Center at St. Antony's, anti-Americanism has replaced a belief in socialism as the common denominator that holds disparate groups together. It also binds the left to Britain's growing Muslim population, anti-globalists and anti-Zionists. "Anti-Americanism is glue that holds them together, and hatred of Israel is one aspect," he said.

A number of sources close to the council said the Thacker nomination was pushed by the council's controversial executive director, Pat Ware, an African American woman allied with the Family Research Council and other conservative Christian groups and a vocal proponent of abstinence as an AIDS prevention method. Ware referred media calls to the White House. A member of the council said Ware has made several comments to gay members of the council suggesting that gay white men are responsible for infecting the African American community with AIDS. Others confirmed that Ware and her allies among conservative Christian groups have promoted that theory.

In my last column, I cited a Time article reporting that the president had "quietly reinstated" a custom of sending a wreath to the Confederate Memorial. Time has since corrected the story, saying he didn't revive the custom, but simply continued it. I would still ask: Why keep a tradition of honoring the Confederacy while you're going to court to stop a tradition of helping black students at the University of Michigan?

Consider for a moment the current French position — and, no, I don't mean prone. This week they announced that containment works. The French foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, declared, "Already we know for a fact that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs are being largely blocked, even frozen. We must do everything possible to strengthen this process."
Well, if France knows for "a fact," then France also knows for a fact that Iraq has such weapons programs. After all, you can't block or freeze what doesn't exist (if you don't find this logic compelling, go right now and tell your wife that your longstanding efforts to bed Filipino hookers have been "largely blocked, even frozen" by her constant inspections into your bank account and that she therefore has no reason to take a more aggressive posture towards you. Then, see what happens).

About 40 minutes later, another Iraqi man stopped a U.N. vehicle outside the headquarters pleading "Save me! Save me!" in Arabic, according to the U.N. The man, apparently unarmed, forced his way into the driver's seat of the stopped vehicle, as an Iraqi guard struggled to pull him out, while an unfazed U.N. inspector watched from the passenger seat.
Appearing agitated and frightened, the young man, with a closely trimmed beard and mustache, sat inside the white U.N.-marked utility vehicle for 10 minutes, AP reported. At first, an inspection team leader sought help from nearby Iraqi soldiers, but the man refused to leave the vehicle as the uniformed men pulled on his sleeve and collar.
"I am unjustly treated!" he shouted.
Then U.N. security men arrived, and they and Iraqi police carried the man by his feet and arms into the fenced compound, journalists said. The man was turned over to Iraqi authorities at a government office adjacent to the compound, U.N. officials said.

Mr. Schröder spoke today by phone with Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, and a spokesman said that Mr. Putin had "stressed the closeness of the positions of Russia and Germany in calling for a political solution of the Iraq problem." At the White House, Mr. Bush's chief spokesman, Ari Fleischer, maintained the administration's hard line. Saddam Hussein, Mr. Fleischer said, "is engaging in a constant pattern now" of "defying inspectors, refusing to cooperate with inspectors, showing the inspectors facilities in which he knows nothing will be found." The Iraqi leader, Mr. Fleischer added, "is making the end of the line come even closer by his unacceptable behavior." [My italics.]

By taking a hard line against war, the French have more or less increased its likelihood. The previous French position was far more flexible and diplomatically intelligent. It allowed them to take a more conciliatory role while still holding open the possibility of military action. Between outright war and complete appeasement there are various levels of pressure that can be applied. These levels can only be effective, however, when the threat of military force remains in place. France was playing a useful role to this point, but with their latest action, they’ve undermined any degree of flexibility and opted for an either/or solution. There will either be complete appeasement on the Franco-German model or there will be war waged by a divided west.

As a victim of affirmative action, I think I know a little bit about just what happens to a Hispanic student at a prestigious university.

I was accepted into an accelerated pre-med program at the University of California. My SATs were very good, as was my GPA. I graduated 4th in my high school class. Both of my parents were college-educated; my mother worked in a nuclear test lab, and my father was the proverbial Rocket Scientist.

The high school I attended was a joke. All of the district's money, expanded programs, etc., were funneled into a different high school. I could not transfer there because Hispanics were "under-represented" at the school near my house, which was the one I did attend. We were supposed to have a special 'gifted student' program, which I qualified for. We did indeed have one. It was co-ed PE. The good school had advanced math, languages, physics. We had volleyball.

Every single semester started exactly the same way for me. I would get my assigned classes, then spend the rest of the day transferring into the ones I needed. It got to the point that all the teachers knew I'd be in the advanced class, so they'd save me a spot while I got transferred out of the remedial classes. Why was I always placed in the remedial classes? Well, with a last name like MARTINEZ it was just impossible for me to be able to read or write. The other Hispanic kids simply went along with it, taking the path of least resistance. Over at the good school, which had a population of 40% Hispanic, only three Hispanic kids were in the advanced classes. I was the only one at mine.

When I started the accelerated program I was in deep trouble, and not because of my name. The high school had never had anything higher than elementary geometry for math, and so I was already a year behind. The counselors bluntly told me that the only reason I was in the program at all was because of my 'heritage'. After two years of that I transferred over to the English department.

This is where it turned into a farce...

Nowadays, if you point out that someone’s a Communist, you might well be accused of - dum dum DUMMMM - McCarthyism. The term has morphed from its original meaning. It no longer means falsely accusing someone of being a Communist. It now includes correctly identifying someone as a Communist, or ascribing a taint to someone because they don’t reject the Communists in their midst. (I’ll admit there’s a significant difference between the two.) But let’s leave this increasingly insupportable series of generalizations, and return to the point. Do reporters suppress the nature of ANSWER / ACTION because they don’t want to embarrass the movement? No. Do they secretly admire the ANSWER / ACTION / WWP positions on China, North Korea, and other dictatorships? Of course not. (Cuba is another story.) Are they inclined to wonder who’s behind the rallies? No. NeoNazis, Klansmen, Separatists, Militias, the Promise Keepers - these words make reporters’ antennae quiver. "Communist" does not.

Here they go again,
The Yanks in their armoured parade
Chanting their ballads of joy
As they gallop across the big world
Praising America's God.

The gutters are clogged with the dead
The ones who couldn't join in
The others refusing to sing
The ones who are losing their voice
The ones who've forgotten the tune.

The riders have whips which cut.
Your head rolls onto the sand
Your head is a pool in the dirt
Your head is a stain in the dust
Your eyes have gone out and your nose
Sniffs only the pong of the dead
And all the dead air is alive
With the smell of America's God.

Since 1996, Russia has ranked first among nations doing business with Iraq under the oil-for-food program with sales exceeding $4 billion, and Russia still hopes to collect the $12 billion in cold-war-era debt owed by Iraq. In 1997, a consortium led by Russian giant Lukoil signed a contract worth an estimated $4 billion to develop the massive West Qurna oil field in southern Iraq. A contract Lukoil cannot start work on until the U.N. sanctions are lifted... Last year under the oil-for-food program, France sold $1.5 billion worth of goods to Iraq, the most of any nation. Major French companies like communications giant Alcatel and automakers Peugeot and Renault have landed lucrative deals in Iraq. France's Total Fina Elf has exclusive rights to develop the Majnoon and Bin Umar oil fields which are believed to be the largest in the world and estimated to hold 35 billion barrels of oil; more than three times Total Fina Elf's current reserves.

Dr. Cabaj estimates that at least twenty-five percent of all newly infected gay men fall into [bug-chasing] category. With about 40,000 new infections in the United States per year, according to government reports, that would mean 10,000 each year are attributable to that more liberal definition of bug chasing.

A friend in DC emails to tell me that there are 100,000 antiwar protestors on the Mall. I am reminded of watching the New York St. Patrick's Day parade once with a friend of Ulster Unionist sympathies. As the massed ranks of Irish marched past, my friend sighed and said: 'The things you see when you don't have a gun!'

The editor of a sizable newspaper told me recently that he decided the racial makeup of four new hires - two minorities, a white woman, and a white male - before reviewing a single applicant.

"We have no illusions about the brutal nature of Saddam Hussein's regime, therefore we all demand that Baghdad implement the relevant U.N. resolutions in full. However, in addition to disastrous consequences for long-term regional stability, we also fear possible negative repercussions for the joint fight against terrorism. These are fundamental reasons for our rejection of military action."

Considerable creative energy went into some attacks on the president. One large one read "Stop the Fourth Reich -- Visualize Nuremberg/ Iraq." On the other side were rows of doctored photos of all the top-ranking Bush administration officials wearing Nazi uniforms and officers' caps, each with an identifying caption. Bush was identified as "The Angry Puppet" and Mind-controlled Slave/ 'Pro-life' Executioner." Cheney: "The Fuhrer, Already in His Bunker." Powell: "House Negro -- Fakes Left, Moves Right." Rice: "Will Kill Africans for Oil." Ashcroft: "Faith-based fascist, sexless sadist." "Field Marshall Rummy," "Chickenhawk Wolfowitz -- Jews for Genocide," and "Minister of Dis-info -- Ari Goebbels" rounded out the field.

It was impressive for the obvious mainstream roots of the marchers — from young college students to grayheads with vivid protest memories of the 60's.

War with Iraq may yet not come, but, conscious of the potentially terrifying responsibility resting with the British Government, we find ourselves supporting the current commitment to a possible use of force. That is not because we have not agonised, as have so many of our readers and those who demonstrated across the country yesterday, about what is right. It is because we believe that, if Saddam does not yield, military action may eventually be the least awful necessity for Iraq, for the Middle East and for the world.

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

- Wallace Stevens.

Who the hell are you? NOBODY!!!!! Never heard of you. And I am sure the only way you can get any attention is by insulting someone who stands up for what she believes in. She, on the other hand, has everything on the line by speaking up for what she believes. I admire her so much for her courage and was a fan before, but now I am an enormous fan and you can go back to the rock you crawled out from, probably never to be heard from again (hopefully) and look for someone else to attack. Bye Bye!!! - A Proud Democrat who is Ashamed of the United States of America.

Stop using your paleolithic brain dead labels to attempt a smear job on everybody who doesn't adhere to your own knee jerk, fascist, fanatical vision of a Jew World Order.

The people you are supporting don't fight for the American way. Your republican party has been hijacked by extreme Zionists and Oil murderers. If your writing copy for murders then you have no soul. Have fun in hell.

You sound like an elitist old queen gossiping in a tea circle.

Keep up the good work, you are disgracing and discrediting yourself, no need for anyone else to, it's as obvious as the stretchmarks on your anus as you're bent over in a bathhouse, dumbass.

AIDS dementia striking again??

Here's how some liberals reason: The US has no right to defend itself, because the Republicans, and most Americans, are just so tacky and vulgar, not at all like us. I got news for Joan Didion. In politics irony is the first principle. Those tacky middle Americans are right on subjects like welfare and education and national defense, and the hip and the chic and the stylish are utterly clueless. For years I, like the Didiot, assumed that being a liberal just comes with being a cultured and educated person. It took the deaths of 4 thousand Americans for me to see just how wrong that assumption was. Liberals? Hello? Those bastards are trying to kill us! Andrew, the whole dance of white guilt and victimologist whining that dominates liberal politics just makes me physically ill. I live in the world capital of that syndrome and I grow more angry and disgusted every day.

Most serious people will probably accept, separately, these three grim propositions: first, that we face an undefeated terrorist force which will take any opportunity to kill as many of us as possible at any time; second, that Saddam's Iraq will develop any lethal weapons that it can and will use, or threaten to use, them if it possesses them; and, third, that our future security depends, among other things, on doing everything we sensibly can to prevent terrorists from acquiring lethal weapons of the kind which Iraq and others possess or would like to possess.

Washington's attention is not on al-Qaida, as the chairman of the joint chiefs, General Richard Myers, admitted recently. On proliferation issues, the administration's conscious rejection of multilateral approaches on everything from nuclear missiles to handguns is a given. The Middle East peace process is parked well off the highway, and America seems incapable of rational discussion of its own relationship with Israel. The drive against Iraq now has little context other than itself.

The subconscious mind is deeply damaged and indelibly scarred by the sight of such images. I can assure everyone reading this that if they go off in pursuit of images of paedophilic rape they will find them. I urge them not to try. I pray too that they don't happen upon such images as did I, by accident. If they do they may like me become so enraged and disturbed that their dreams are forever haunted.

My point is that the neo-conservatives today, as far as Iraq is concerned, are the idealists, and if their revolutionary ideals have any chance of succeeding, they will have to prevail over the realists, the oil men and the country-club Republicans, who will surely stand in their way. The irony here is that what is left of the left, on the whole, shares the views of the old right. Few believe in a democratic revolution in the Middle East, and even fewer think it is up to America to enforce it.

Empires come into existence, or grow, largely in response to threats or problems. All empires, in the benefits they provide and the damage they do, reflect the culture of the whole nation. The French were unlucky in that their early empire was pre-revolutionary, before France had developed democracy or freedom of trade or speech. The English were luckier that their empire was substantially post-revolutionary; almost all of it was acquired after the Civil War, and most of it after the revolution of 1688. The Americans have been luckiest of all, in that their empire came after the War of Independence and the Civil War. The US empire really started in 1898, with the war in Cuba against Spain. The new American empire is global and powerful, but technologically advanced, liberal and democratic. As the British Empire dwindled and disappeared, an essentially benign American empire has helped to secure the stability of a very vulnerable world.

The consequences of their subsequent Long March through the institutions have gone far to define the country ever since ... In varying degrees, the universities were collectivized and stripped of their traditions ... The worst was in the city-state of Bremen, where students demanded full equality with instructors and insisted on collective, rather than individual, examinations. Twenty would produce one joint thesis. It became so bad that local industries would not take interns from that university because they lacked both knowledge and the will to work ... Since the early 1970s, they [the 68ers] have from that perch become vigorous culture-brokers and image-makers, running public radio and television and glossy magazines such as Der Stern and Der Spiegel - all of them with a sharp left-wing bias. Of course, they are to some extent balanced by newspapers such as the venerable Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung ... But these cannot fully offset the constant barrage of anti-American, anti-Western, anti-Christian and anti-traditional innuendoes, sniggers and assertions to which the German television viewers have been subjected for decades.

They read good books, and quote, but never learn
a language other than the scream of rocket-burn.
Our straighter talk is drowned but ironclad:
elections, money, empire, oil and Dad.

Why don't people vote their own self-interest? Every few years the Republicans propose a tax cut, and every few years the Democrats pull out their income distribution charts to show that much of the benefits of the Republican plan go to the richest 1 percent of Americans or thereabouts. And yet every few years a Republican plan wends its way through the legislative process and, with some trims and amendments, passes.

VANGUARDIA: At what point of the trip are you right now?

SONTAG: In a reflection about the United States. America has always been the place of dreams, the place all Europeans went to looking for their dream, the place where all was possible. And inside of America, Americans have at the same time their own America: California.

And what is the America of Susan Sontag?

This question ... Oh, it is good! Because... it is Europe! What an idea: My America is called Europe. It is my place of dreams.

Since when?

Since I was a little girl: I had a solitary youth, in small rural towns in the south of Arizona and the south of California. My magic carpet was the world of books. And they carried me to Europe. I read from the classics…I dreamt of leaping from my childhood to be able to get out of there. I lived my infancy as an obstacle. I didn’t enjoy it. And today I’m sorry for that…but it’s just that my dream was to be a foreigner.

And did you realize your dream?

Yes: I’ve lived a lot in Paris and in various countries of Europe. I’m attracted by its culture, its disposition for debate … Most of the things I like are in Europe.

And what do you dislike about the United States?

That all that primordial fantasy was subjected to consumerism, the ideology of "living to buy." That is the current ideology. It dumbs down the people, makes their main values be those of buying and enjoying themselves.

I have read that because of that you have said that you’re ashamed to be an American.

No, that is an incorrect journalistic headline, and I appreciate your letting me clarify it: what shames me is not to be an American, but that the Northamerican foreign politics are so aggressive! This exercise of political power of the Bush Administration, so bellicose!

St. George would arrive in Cappadocia accompanied, not by a horse, but by a secretariat. He would be armed, not by a lance, but by several flexible formulas ... He would propose a conference with the dragon. He would then lend the dragon a lot of money. The maiden’s release would be referred to Geneva or New York, the dragon reserving all rights meanwhile.

"We think the declaration failed to answer a great many questions. A more profound reading of the text has now confirmed the impression." He said a list of Iraqi scientists omitted several key names, and he would consider taking officials out of Iraq for questioning. Mr Blix also disclosed that Iraq had imported missile engines and raw material for producing solid missile fuel in violation of UN sanctions.

Right now a sensible plan would rush help to the long-term unemployed, whose benefits — in an act of incredible callousness — were allowed to lapse last month. It would provide immediate, large-scale aid to beleaguered state governments, which have been burdened with expensive homeland security mandates even as their revenues have plunged. Given our long-run budget problems, any tax relief would be temporary, and go largely to low- and middle-income families.

What Democrats are less likely to emphasize is that Mr. Bush's plan would provide bigger tax cuts for many people at middle-income and lower-income levels than theirs' would.

I would never commit British troops to a war I thought was wrong or unnecessary. But the price of influence is that we do not leave the US to face the tricky issues alone. By tricky, I mean the ones which people wish weren't there, don't want to deal with and, if I can put it a little perjoratively, know the US should confront, but want the luxury of criticising them for it.

Of course, the argument could be made that North Korea shows what could happen if Saddam is not toppled and proceeds to build these weapons himself. We are essentially being deterred by Kim Jong-Il. Do we want to sit around for a few years so Saddam Hussein can also deter us and use his own arsenal as a protective cover for aggression? One reason Bush can't make this argument is that the rationale for going to war, at least under the terms of the U.N. resolution, is the false statements and omissions that Saddam Hussein has made about his nuclear-, biological-, and chemical-weapons programs—in other words, the possibility that he has such weapons. You can say we're going to war because Saddam has weapons of mass destruction. You can say we're going to war to keep him from developing weapons of mass destruction. You can't really say both at the same time.

It is not surprising that those successful by the norms of a school system should resent a society, adhering to different norms, which does not grant them the same success. Nor, when those are the very ones who go on to shape a society's self-image, its evaluation of itself, is it surprising when the society's verbally responsive portion turns against it.

I have a theory that liberals and leftists prefer their leaders complicated, and conservatives prefer their leaders uncomplicated. I think the left expects a good leader to have an exotic or intricate personality or character. (A whole generation of liberal journalists grew up reading Jack Newfield and Pete Hamill on Bobby Kennedy's sense of tragedy, Murray Kempton on the bizarreness that was LBJ, and a host of books with names like "Nixon Agonistes" and "RFK at Forty," and went into journalism waiting for the complicated politicians of their era to emerge. They are, that is, pro-complication because their ambition to do great work like the great journalists of the 1960s seems to demand the presence of complicated political figures.) Liberals like their leaders interesting. I always think this may be because some of them have not been able to fully engage the idea of a God, and tend to fill that hole in themselves with politics and its concerns. If the world of government and politics becomes your god, and yields a supergod called a president, you want that god to be interesting.

All American politicians are liars and hypocrites about race, from Democrats like Hillary Clinton posing as champions of the downtrodden black masses while buying a house in the whitest town they can find, to Republicans pretending not to know that (a) many millions of nonblack Americans seriously dislike black people, (b) well-nigh every one of those people votes Republican, and (c) without those votes no Republican would ever win any election above the county level. (Am I being beeped out yet?)

One time we got off the train in a town that was pretty solidly black. It took us about five minutes to figure this out. Then we went back to the railroad station and sat half an hour waiting for the next train.

You understand, I am sure, that when I talk about race, I am talking about blacks and nonblacks, the two races that inhabit the United States.

After evaluating all 2,129 columns written by our 37 pundits in 2002, it's time to draw some conclusions. I've stressed all along that Lying in Ponds is attempting to make a distinction between ordinary party preference (there's nothing wrong with being opinionated or having a political ideology) and excessive partisanship ("blind, prejudiced, and unreasoning allegiance"). While it's obviously difficult to draw a definitive line, the top three pundits in the rankings clearly revealed excessive partisanship by the remarkable consistency of their extremely one-sided commentary throughout the year. The New York Times' Paul Krugman took the partisanship lead early and lapped the field. In a year in which Mr. Krugman generated lots of buzz and won an award, his 18:1 ratio of negative to positive Republican references and 99 columns without a single substantive deviation from the party line were unmatched in the Lying in Ponds portion of the punditocracy.

One is tempted to ask who is the real racist here? On the one hand we have people — like me — who see horrific, flesh-eating, dull-witted creatures with jagged feral teeth, venomous mouths, pointed devilish ears, and reptilian skin, and say, "Cool, Orcs!" On the other hand we have people, like Mr. Yatt, who see the same repugnant creatures and righteously exclaim "black people!"

No one expects the President to be a saint. ... But it is pretty amazing the distance that this administration will go in trying to fool the public. Sometimes I have the feeling that I no longer live in one of the world's oldest democracies, but in the Philippines under a new Marcos.

Instead [of writing a column about the New Economy], I now find myself once again as the lonely voice of truth in a sea of corruption. Sometimes I think that one of these days I'll end up in one of those cages on Guantanamo Bay (laughs). But I can still seek asylum in Germany. I hope you'd accept me in an emergency.

After lunch, which was extremely good, Dr Adenauer delivered for nearly an hour a lecture on the dangers of communism and the best way to deal with it in the schools, in the factories and in the homes. I regret to inform Your Majesty that I fell asleep during the latter part of this oration.

In fact, the Shiite fundamentalists must be high-fiving in Tehran over the costly American makeover of Central Asia. These fundamentalists would be the biggest benefactors of any takedown of neighboring Iraq, as they were when the United States installed Iran's longtime puppets, the Northern Alliance, as top dogs in Afghanistan.

The moral is the motto of the British redcoat: "Look to your front." Don't think about what other people are doing: you'll get it wrong and it's disheartening. Or, to quote Gandalf again - and Jackson picked out just these words to repeat in the first movie, varying the pronouns cunningly - "That [the future] is not for us to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."

Gayford Woodrow, the consul general in Jerusalem, sent a dispatch to the Foreign Office on Sept 12, six days after the attack, saying: "Before we reproach the Arabs too much, perhaps we might try to put ourselves in their shoes. "They are, after all, human beings with normal human failings. The Palestinians in particular have seen their land taken away from them by a group of mainly European invaders equipped with superior armed force and modern technology. Whatever one's moral criticism, it must be agreed that the Munich operation was well planned and that the Arabs there carried it out to the bitter end. It is said that lives were really lost because of Israel and West German bungling incompetence."