the good white American male still had the Armed Forces. If blacks and Hispanics were numerous there, still they were not a majority, and the officer corps, (if the TV was a reliable witness), suggested that the percentage of white men increased as one rose in rank to the higher officers. Moreover, we had knock-out tank echelons, Super-Marines, and-one magical ace in the hole — the best air force that ever existed. If we cannot find our machismo anywhere else, we can certainly settle in on the interface between combat and technology. Let me then advance the offensive suggestion that this may have been one of the cardinal reasons we went looking for war.

Echoing Santorum, Kurtz raises the possibility of a "slippery slope" leading from same-sex marriage to polygamy. But one can easily draw a distinction. The widespread practice of polygamy would have great social costs. It would distort the sexual marketplace by creating an undersupply of marriageable women. (Polyandry, the practice of women having multiple husbands, is too rare to be worth discussing.) The result is the creation of what Jonathan Rauch calls a "sexual underclass" of "low-status men" whose prospects for marriage are virtually nil... By contrast, it's hard to imagine any great social harm arising from official recognition of same-sex unions. Just about anyone who would consider "marrying" someone of the same sex is outside the ordinary marriage pool anyway...

There is a wide gulf, of course, between someone who merely fine-tunes her Catholicism and someone who replaces the Virgin Mary with the goddess of chaos; between a Jew who mixes milk with meat and a Jew who practices witchcraft. If I am describing a trend, it is one that covers a wide spectrum of behavior, from the ordinary to the outré. As a journalist, I have naturally focused on the latter - but it’s the former, obviously, that is reshaping society.

A Senate Judiciary Committee aide said Democrats are scrutinizing Allen's statements about abortion and gays. During the 1984 campaign, Allen was criticized for his response to Hunt's description of Helms's backers as right-wingers. Allen said Hunt had links "with the queers."

It is one of the main reasons given by the Saudi-born dissident - blamed by Washington for the 11 September attacks - to justify violence against the United States and its allies.

In "An Instinct for Dragons" (Routledge, 2000), Dr. David E. Jones, a professor of anthropology at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, posits a biological explanation that jibes with the Jungian notion of unconscious collective fears. He argues that the dragon image, fermented in the primal soup of man's first nightmares, is a composite of the carnivores who fed on human ancestors when they were tree-dwelling monkeys: the pythons, the big cats and the raptors.

Bones exposed by storms, earthquakes or digging were well known to the ancients, said Dr. Adrienne Mayor, a professor of folklore at Princeton and the author of "The First Fossil Hunters" (Princeton, 2000). She argues that the myth of gold-guarding griffins arose in the red clay of the Gobi Desert, a landscape literally scattered with white Protoceratops skulls, with parrot beaks and bony neck frills.

You yourself left Jordan before age 10 to attend St. Edmund's School in Surrey, England, and then Eaglebrook School and Deerfield Academy in Deerfield, Mass. Then you went to the Royal Military Academy in Sandhurst, England.You also spent years taking degrees at Oxford, England, and at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. Isn't it hypocritical of you to criticize Mr. Chalabi for not suffering alongside the Iraqi people? After all, you weren't exactly suffering alongside the Jordanian people.

In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That's not to pick on homosexuality. It's not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing. And when you destroy that you have a dramatic impact on the quality _

[L]ast month, the local United States attorney, J. Strom Thurmond Jr., brought federal charges against Mr. Bursey under a seldom-used statute that allows the Secret Service to restrict access to areas the president is visiting. He faces six months in jail and a $5,000 fine... A spokeswoman for the airport said officials there had established a protest area on the verge of a highway, a good half mile from the hangar where the president would be speaking... The police in Charleston and Greenville had been accommodating, [Mr. Bursey] said, when he had asked to avoid the protest zones, which he described as being "out there behind the coliseum by the Dumpsters." It did not work this time. "We attempted to dialogue for a while, them telling me to go to the free-speech zone, me saying I was in it: the United States of America," Mr. Bursey said. Finally, he said, an airport policeman told him he had to put down his sign ("No War for Oil") or leave. "'You mean, it's the content of my sign?' I asked him," Mr. Bursey said. "He said, 'Yes, sir, it's the content of your sign.'" Mr. Bursey kept the sign and was arrested.

We do not think Santorum should be stripped of his Senate leadership role for expressing deeply held religious views. But we do believe he does his nation and particularly the Republican Party a disservice by bracing himself in the door of society and trying to keep gay people out. They're already in. The high schools where gays were terrorized when Santorum was a student now have gay/straight fellowship leagues. And one last point. How can we have any hope of creating a democratic government in Iraq free from domination by repressive religion if we cannot free our own laws of official faith-based biases inflicted on our fellow citizens?

Santorum has declared that President John F. Kennedy's vow to separate his faith from his policies was wrong. That approach has caused "much harm in America," Santorum said in an interview with a Catholic newspaper last year. "All of us have heard people say, 'I privately am against abortion, homosexual marriage, stem cell research, cloning. But who am I to decide that it's not right for somebody else?' It sounds good. But it is the corruption of freedom of conscience," he told the National Catholic Reporter.

The three most recent payment authorizations, beginning on April 4, 2000, and ending on January 14, 2003 are for $3 million each. All three authorizations include statements that show the Iraqi leadership's strong political motivation in paying Galloway for his vociferous opposition to US and British plans to invade Iraq. The Jan. 14, 2003, document, written on Republican Guard stationary with its Iraqi eagle and "Trust in Allah," calls for the "Manager of the security department, in the name of President Saddam Hussein, to order a gratuity to be issued to Mr. George Galloway of British nationality in the amount of three million dollars only." The document states that the money is in return for "his courageous and daring stands against the enemies of Iraq, like Blair, the British Prime Minister, and for his opposition in the House of Commons and Lords against all outrageous lies against our patient people..." ... An Iraqi general attached to Hussein's Republican Guard discovered the documents in a house in the Baghdad suburbs used by Qusay, who is chief of Iraq's elite Guard units.

I was raised during the '80s in the midwest in a moderately Republican family. Conservative enough, but not rabidly so. Anyway, after the brief fliration with leftism that's obligatory for all normal people in their early '20s, I eventually drifted back to the GOP. That was until I met my wife ... let me add my black Democrat wife. She thought I was insane when I told her what my affiliation was; she herself was pretty traditional, but couldn't countenance how any decent person could belong to that party. I defended my affiliation strongly; I told her that the GOP had finally come around. It was enlightened enough to believe that limited government and free markets were good, that morals should be traditional but that one could be gay but still be sober, hard-working and responsible; but most importantly that those principles had gradually overcome whatever residual racism and religious extremism that may still have existed. Whatever, she said; just you wait and see. After having been with her for seven years, and having gotten too many dirty glares during both our trips together to Texas, I finally had to give it all up earlier this year. I defended Bush and the party as best I could, even during the Bob Jones fiasco, Bush's statement that the unsaved don't get into heaven, and his mocking of Karla Tucker. However, the Trent Lott episode finally did me in. Of course Bush told him to step down, but clandestinely so. However, there has been no denunciation over Santorum's remarks from the White House yet, nor will there be anytime soon. I know there are plenty of intelligent, open-minded people in the party, and that they're fighting the good fight. However, I cannot, on principle, belong to a party that still has someone as high up as Santorum believing and saying the things he does. I refuse to support an organization that pursues American economic and military hegemony overseas in the name of freedom, but will not disown the most reactionary of social principles at home. I will never be a Democrat, but I'm afraid that only my (bi-racial and possibly gay, as my wife has a late gay uncle) great-grandchildren will be secure in a credible Republican party.

As a Christian, a conservative, and a registered Republican, I am shocked and appalled (well, maybe appalled and a little less shocked than I'd like to be) at Senator Santorum's comments. I cannot believe that this is what passes for conservative thought these days. I was raised a conservative by two very conservative parents who always told me that they were conservative because they didn't like the government telling them what they could and could not do, especially in the privacy of their own home. Being a conservative always seemed to be about individual freedom and liberty to them, and it is one of the things that has led me back to conservatism after a brief (and fictitious, ultimately) hiatus somewhere left of center. Now, I feel ashamed to be a registered Republican and am beginning to regret that post-9/11 moment when I decided that the Republican party was dead right on international and foreign affairs and headed in the right direction on domestic issues, headed back to their conservative roots on issues such as these sodomy laws. To deny those who might choose, as free adults, in the privacy of their own home, to engage in behavior that is opposed to another's morality, whether they are heterosexual or homosexual, is repugnant to my notions of conservatism. If Santorum is somehow representative of what is conservatism in the United States today, then I say no thank you to it.

In this case, what we're talking about, basically, is priests who were having sexual relations with post-pubescent men. We're not talking about priests with 3-year-olds, or 5-year-olds. We're talking about a basic homosexual relationship. Which, again, according to the world view sense is a a perfectly fine relationship as long as it's consensual between people.

In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That's not to pick on homosexuality. It's not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing.

I don't personally want to jail people for private sex; but as long as it's homosexuals alone who are subject to this invasion of privacy, I'm not going to get too exercised about it. If I did, I'd upset a few of my friends on the far right, and, heavens, we cannot afford a real fight over this. And, anyway, they don't enforce these laws, do they? Except when they do. They're being abolished anyway. Why should I add my voice to a chorus that's winning? And, (now talking to himself) isn't good for the homosexuals to be just a little scared that they could get arrested? Deters a few. Sends the right message. Keeps them in their place, after all. Ensures that our public morality is, well, heterosexual. This is the status quo and it's not too uncomfortable, is it? Well, I don't find it uncomfortable. That Sullivan, fine fellow in some ways. What a pity he's so obsessed by these personal issues. A few people's lives ruined for doing something I've sometimes done with my girlfriend isn't too high a price to pay for conservative unity, is it? It's not as if there's a valid moral principle involved here.

[I]f the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything.

The idea is that the state doesn't have rights to limit individuals' wants and passions. I disagree with that. I think we absolutely have rights because there are consequences to letting people live out whatever wants or passions they desire.

"Nobody steered me in that direction at all. We just went and purely by chance we stumbled across this room which had these files in it, and again purely by chance we came across these files which carried the label Britain. And it was two days before we had actually gone through the contents and found this document. I find it very hard to believe that this document is not authentic. I think it would require an enormous amount of imagination to believe that someone went to the trouble of composing a forged document in Arabic and then planting it in a file of patently authentic documents and burying it in a darkened room on the off-chance that a British journalist might happen upon it and might bother to translate it. That strikes me as so wildly improbable as to be virtually inconceivable."

Asked to explain the document, he said yesterday: "Maybe it is the product of the same forgers who forged so many other things in this whole Iraq picture. Maybe The Daily Telegraph forged it. Who knows?" When the letter from the head of the Iraqi intelligence service was read to him, he said: "The truth is I have never met, to the best of my knowledge, any member of Iraqi intelligence. I have never in my life seen a barrel of oil, let alone owned, bought or sold one."

Garner was an enormous hit with the Iraqis present at the meeting. He wisely stayed very much in the background, judging that the key task at hand was having Iraqis speak to one another, rather than having them hear speeches from representatives of the U.S.-led coalition. When Garner did finally speak, it was to make a direct, honest, straight-from-the-heart appeal to the participants that won them over instantly. He said, simply, that his role was to support Iraqis in the reconstruction of their country, and that he plans on leaving as soon as Iraqis themselves find it appropriate. "He really means it," a businessman from Mosul said to me after the conference. "This man is the genuine article."

from Lieutenant-General William Wallace, Commander of the US Army Fifth Corps: "The enemy we are fighting is different from the one we'd war-gamed."

He, too, had a relentlessly regional perspective, and a clear sense of estrangement from that part of America that did not support him. He was not much impressed with the claims of wage labor. His values were militaristic. He had dreams of building an empire at gunpoint. And he was willing to tear up the larger political order, which had worked reasonably well for about 60 years, to advance his factional cause. The American president - though not of the United States - whom George W. Bush most nearly resembles is the Confederacy's Jefferson Davis.

"I told the faithful that Iraq lived through its passion in recent weeks with the American invasion," said Father Butros Haddad, priest at the Church of the Virgin Mary in central Baghdad. "But it will be reborn like Christ was resurrected," the cleric told hundreds of Chaldean Catholic faithful. "The resurrection comes always after the passion, joy comes back always after the pain."

At midnight on April 1, without warning, a group of men led by Mr. Muthanna, identifying themselves as intelligence agents, broke into my room at the Palestine Hotel. The men, in suits and ties, at least one with a holstered pistol under his jacket, said they had known "for a long time" that I was an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency, that I was from that moment under arrest, and that a failure to "cooperate" would lead to more serious consequences. "For you, it will be the end," Mr. Muthanna said. "Where we will take you, you will not return."

In the light of recent events, we now accept – albeit with a very bad grace – that the coalition forces seem for the time being to have got away with it, and that large numbers of Iraqis, though clearly paid by the CIA to do so, may have appeared to be not entirely displeased at the downfall of a regime which, whatever its faults, did at least for 30 years guarantee the stability of a potentially explosive mix of Shias, Sunnis and Kurds, who will now undoubtedly plunge the whole region into a state of chaos which will threaten the peace of the world.
Whilst apologising for any confusion to which our reports may have given rise (and allowing for the fact that they could be broadcast only under monitoring restrictions imposed by the Iraqi authorities), we now realise that the only hope for future peace is for the hated Bush/Blair imperialist aggressors to be replaced at once by a French-led UN force of Russian troops of the type who were so successful in bringing peace to the Muslims of Groszny.

A wanted Palestinian fugitive, Abu Abbas, has been detained by US forces in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. He led the Palestinian Liberation Front, which hijacked a US cruise ship, the Achille Lauro, in 1985. During the hijack, an elderly American passenger died. Abu Abbas had been mentioned by US President George W Bush as an example of the kind of figure given refuge by the former regime of Saddam Hussein.

I have a confession: I have at times, as the war has unfolded, secretly wished for things to go wrong. Wished for the Iraqis to be more nationalistic, to resist longer. Wished for the Arab world to rise up in rage. Wished for all the things we feared would happen. I'm not alone: A number of serious, intelligent, morally sensitive people who oppose the war have told me they have had identical feelings.
Some of this is merely the result of pettiness -- ignoble resentment, partisan hackdom, the desire to be proved right and to prove the likes of Rumsfeld wrong, irritation with the sanitizing, myth-making American media. That part of it I feel guilty about, and disavow. But some of it is something trickier: It's a kind of moral bet-hedging, based on a pessimism not easy to discount, in which one's head and one's heart are at odds.

I know that adopting an impartial stand in the [Arab] media world is akin to suicide, because there are many who push the media into extremes, and take 'nationalistic' positions, and maintain that whoever thinks differently is committing treason against the [national] cause. [They maintain] that lying for the sake of the cause is moral and honorable. The Arab media [of today], in these hard times, is slowly turning into the 1967 media; at that time, radio announcers, analysts, and journalists exaggerated acts of courage and covered up defeats, which - historically - became a mockery... The Arab media today, with its clear inclination towards exaggerations and false promises of victory, is feeding the public stories that have nothing to do with the real events in the field. Hence, it is replicating the old media, despite the fact that it is broadcasting in color and using electronic technologies ...

My Oscar "Backlash": "Stupid White Men" Back At #1, "Bowling" Breaks New Records... Dear friends, It appears that the Bush administration will have succeeded in colonizing Iraq sometime in the next few days. This is a blunder of such magnitude - and we will pay for it for years to come. It was not worth the life of one single American kid in uniform, let alone the thousands of Iraqis who have died, and my condolences and prayers go out to all of them ... Can I share with you what it's been like for me since I used my time on the Oscar stage two weeks ago to speak out against Bush and this war? I hope that, in reading what I'm about to tell you, you'll feel a bit more emboldened to make your voice heard in whatever way or forum that is open to you. When "Bowling for Columbine" was announced as the Oscar winner for Best Documentary at the Academy Awards, the audience rose to its feet. It was a great moment, one that I will always cherish. They were standing and cheering for a film that says we Americans are a uniquely violent people, using our massive stash of guns to kill each other and to use them against many countries around the world.

Mr. Alterman told me he was "enormously gratified" by the reception to his book (good review in The Times), but added that he was also disappointed because the book had "been crowded out by the war," and thus it had been hard to get "traction." "I had a lot of reasons to be anti-war, and the book was a small one," he said.

In Firdos Square in central Baghdad, a group of Iraqi men climbed up the pedestal of a 20-foot statue of Mr. Hussein and smacked it with a sledgehammer. Then they put a chain around the neck of the statue and tied it to an armored American military vehicle. The crowd then cheered and clapped as the vehicle pulled away, toppling the statue. Several Iraqis danced and jumped on the fallen statue. Elsewhere in Baghdad, the American military emptied jails overnight, releasing their prisoners. In the neighborhood called Saddam City, a densely populated Shiite area, crowds of men shouted and waved their arms in jubilation. Some carried makeshift flags. One middle-aged man held up a huge portrait of Mr. Hussein, and in the middle of the street used his shoe to beat the face of the Iraqi leader, a particular insult. "This man has killed two million of us," he yelled as bystanders milled around approvingly.

ARTHUR: Look, I'll have your leg. [kick] Right! [whop] [ARTHUR chops the BLACK KNIGHT's right leg off]
BLACK KNIGHT: Right. I'll do you for that!
ARTHUR: You'll what?
BLACK KNIGHT: Come here!
ARTHUR: What are you going to do, bleed on me?
BLACK KNIGHT: I'm invincible!
ARTHUR: You're a looney.
BLACK KNIGHT: The Black Knight always triumphs! Have at you! Come on, then. [whop] [ARTHUR chops the BLACK KNIGHT's last leg off]
BLACK KNIGHT: Oh? All right, we'll call it a draw.
ARTHUR: Come, Patsy.
BLACK KNIGHT: Oh. Oh, I see. Running away, eh? You yellow bastards! Come back here and take what's coming to you. I'll bite your legs off!

"He also told me that although he seldom speaks Arabic these days (though I heard him conversing with family members), he listens to the Arabic service of the BBC. Without my prompting him, he said that he also couldn't understand how the British could be broadcasting such lies against their own forces. The BBC service is dominated by Egyptian Muslim fundamentalists, he told me. Can't they find any moderate Arabic-speaking broadcasters who could present fair coverage? He wanted to write to the British government, but, well, he just didn't know how. But how could this be? How could this be?"

Saturday, April 5, will be the day most people will remember as the day when the journalistic standards of the World Service committed suicide. The BBC’s bad day in Baghdad started early: A column of US soldiers had entered southwestern Baghdad just after daybreak. The soldiers - in tanks and armored personnel carriers - drove through the city for several kilometers encountering only sporadic resistance. Near the university, the column turned left, drove out of the capital and parked at the international airport, which was already securely in American hands... Cut to: Andrew Gilligan, the BBC's man in downtown Baghdad. "I'm in the center of Baghdad," said a very dubious Gilligan, "and I don't see anything… But then the Americans have a history of making these premature announcements." Gilligan was referring to a military communiqué from Qatar the day before saying the Americans had taken control of most of Baghdad’s airport. When that happened, Gilligan had told World Service listeners that he was there, at the airport - but the Americans weren't. Gilligan inferred that the Americans were lying. An hour or two later, a different BBC correspondent pointed out that Gilligan wasn't at the airport, actually. He was nearby - but apparently far enough away that the other correspondent felt it necessary to mention that he didn’t really know if Gilligan was around, but that no matter what Gilligan had seen or not seen, the airport was firmly and obviously in American hands. It was important to the BBC that Gilligan not be wrong twice in two days. Whatever the truth was, the BBC, like Walter Duranty’s New York Times, must never say, "I was wrong." So, despite the fact that the appearance of American troops in Baghdad was surely one of the war's big moments, and one the BBC had obviously missed, American veracity became the story of the day. Gilligan, joined by his colleagues in Baghdad, Paul Wood and Rageh Omaar, kept insisting that not only had the Americans not gone to the "center" - which they reckoned to be where they were - they hadn't really been in the capital at all. Both Omaar and Wood told listeners that they had been on hour-long Iraqi Ministry of Information bus rides - "and," said Wood, "we were free to go anywhere" - yet they had seen nothing of an American presence in the city. From Qatar, a BBC correspondent helpfully explained that US briefings, such as that announcing the Baghdad incursion, were meaningless exercises, "more PR than anything else." Maybe, implied the World Service, the Americans had made it all up: all day long, Wood repeatedly reported that there was no evidence to support the American claim.

"...it is now widely accepted, including by the BMA, that this surgical procedure has medical and psychological risks...the harm of denying a person the opportunity to choose not to be circumcised must also be taken into account, together with the damage that can be done to the individual's relationship with his parents and the medical profession if he feels harmed by the procedure. ... The BMA does not believe that parental preference alone constitutes sufficient grounds for performing a surgical procedure on a child unable to express his own view... Doctors should ensure that any parents seeking circumcision for their son in the belief that it confers health benefits are fully informed of the lack of consensus amongst the profession over such benefits, and how great any potential benefits and harms are. The BMA considers that the evidence concerning health benefit from non-therapeutic circumcision is insufficient for this alone to be a justification for doing it."

Probably the most likely scenario would be about one third of Iraq's armed forces fighting hard, limited use of tactical WMD, and some extensive combat in a few cities. In this most likely case, the campaign would probably last four to eight weeks and result in roughly 500 to 1,000 American combat deaths.

Because the war has taken such a strange form, the media, particularly those at home, may be forgiven for their misinterpretation of how it has progressed. Checks have been described as defeats, minor firefights as major battles. In truth, there has been almost no check to the unimpeded onrush of the coalition, particularly the dramatic American advance to Baghdad; nor have there been any major battles. This has been a collapse, not a war.

Many local people seemed genuinely happy to see the army rolling past, laughing and joking even as they were stopped to be frisked at the checkpoints into and out of the city. A jubilant crowd of about 100 Iraqis surrounded two British tanks sitting side by side near a mural of Saddam Hussein and started cheering the soldiers inside and giving the thumbs-up sign. Soldiers were handed pink carna tions and yellow flowers. Abdul Karim, an English teacher, was wandering through the city late in the day. He was standing opposite a burning building, painted with the inevitable portrait of Saddam He said it was used as a food warehouse by the Ba'ath party and that it had been looted and set on fire. He said he had a BA in English. "It's great, it's great," he said with an expansive gesture. "The Fedayeen have gone. They left on Saturday and Sunday. It is fantastic."

I am part of that baby boomer generation and like many I demonstrated against that war in Viet Nam. But unlike some I do realize it is not 1969 anymore. Viet Nam was a very long, costly and ugly war. The divisions did not come overnight and for many they will not go away. It is part of their identity, their very purpose in life. Many felt the same after the American Civil War. It took a generation then and it might take a generation now for enough time and distance to come about to see that war and its legacy in proper perspective. I supported the government in this endeavor for the simple reason that I am an American and I don't like fascist dictators the likes of Saddam Hussein. They can call that simplistic, but then again so is their knee jerk anti Americanism. There is nothing sadder than an old hippie trying to regain his/her youth through the manipulation of others and at the expense of a suffering people they claim to feel sympathy for. I hate the destruction, but I also hate doing nothing while hundreds of thousands of people die. I guess some of my generation and the UN security council have no such qualms.

The Americans know that M Chirac double-crossed them over Resolution 1441; they know every detail of how and why he did it; they know what it has cost them in money and in lives. They will shake hands at photo opportunities; they will play the Marseillaise; they will drink toasts in mediocre champagne at diplomatic dinners; but they will be slow to forgive and they will never forget.

Using television receiving equipment to receive or record broadcast television programmes without the correct licence is a criminal offence. You could therefore face prosecution and a hefty fine of up to £1,000 ($1600). You may be asking yourself 'how will they know if I'm using a TV without a licence?' The answer is through a number of different methods. At the heart of our operation is the TV Licensing database. It has details of over 26 million UK addresses. Our officers have access to this computer system and a fleet of detector vans and hand-held detectors to track down and prosecute people who use a television without a licence. To find out how effective our methods are click here. Each year it becomes easier to find and prosecute people breaking the law in this way.

This afternoon's signed editorial on French-government-owned Radio France International shockingly compared public attitudes in France today to those of the Vichy regime. (www.rfi.fr - streaming video editorial today at 12:10 p.m. Eastern time from Alain Genestare; archived recording should be posted soon). The Coalition forces in Iraq, said the editorial, are frequently referred to in France today as the "Anglo-American forces," an expression apparently not widely heard since the days of the collaborationist Vichy government over a half century ago. As some of your readers may already know, comparing anyone or anything to the Vichy regime is, in the language of contemporary French politics, like dropping a nuclear bomb. Vichy is not something the French have really come to terms with, even today. (Remember the éclat several years ago when Mitterrand's Vichy ties came to light?)  Well, somebody in the French government must be getting worried. It's about time. The radio editorial then went on to cite the Le Monde poll you posted about several days ago, and expressed shock that some one third of the French should be hoping for a Saddamite victory, a victory by a "criminal against humanity."

A grisly discovery reported by British military officials today of what were said to be the remains of hundreds of people at an abandoned military compound on the outskirts of Zubayr, in southern Iraq, served to remind allied forces and the world of other aspects of Mr. Hussein's rule. The remains were packed in bundles that contained shreds of military uniforms, the British officials said, but it could not be determined how old they were, or how they got there ... The British soldiers who investigated the Zubayr military base found 200 makeshift coffins bearing seriously decayed corpses, perhaps a year or a number of years old. Soldiers of the Royal Horse Artillery also found Arabic documents and photographs of men bearing head wounds and showing signs of torture or disfigurement in the warehouse. "I wouldn't want to speculate, but the bones inside are obviously years old," Capt. Jack Kemp told British reporters at the scene.

For the purposes of our present discussion, the particulars of Kerry's remark are almost beside the point.

The BBC is not state-funded. We are publicly funded through a license fee paid by every household in the United Kingdom. The British public, not the government of the day, owns the BBC, and it is to the British public we are accountable.

I will admit to being a bit of an Army partisan. I'm also the first to acknowledge the brilliant work the Air Force has done in close air support (bombing of tanks, troops, etc). It looks like the strategic work (Baghdad, communications networks, etc) has been more mixed, but even there the jury will be out until the war is over. But with "it looks as if this war will be won primarily by the amazing work of the special forces, and the airforce" you're off base. I think a full reading of the available reporting from both the embeds and those covering the larger view will bear that out. But I'll highlight a few points -

-The 3rd Infantry Division has been in one giant knife fight for much of its charge north (a charge praised by the British, see London Times). The 3rd Squadron of the 7th Cavalry Regiment (the lead element for the 3rd ID) has been in some brutal battles. In those battles the Army has lost M-1 tanks on the battlefield for the first time EVER. Both the Marines and Army have been fighting house to house. We're hearing anecdotal stories of streets covered with dead Iraqi troops. This has been a brutal fight. John Ringo (www.johnringo.com), a Fox contributer and former paratrooper might be a good guy to talk to if you're interested. He's pretty accessible (though I don't know him) and well informed on the 7th Cavalry's recent battles.

-You say "Rummy" was right. Rummy also said we didn't need the Brits. Imagine where we would be if the Brits weren't bottling up Basra with a couple of brigades. Keep in mind the Brits have one division in country, and we only have a little more than two. That he would even consider writing off that contribution should tell you a little about what he thought this war was going to be like.

-Everyone talks about the plan for a "rolling start". Why? It's BS to suggest that this was Frank's ideal plan. Vernon Loeb's reporting in the Washington Post makes that clear. Rumsfeld tore up plan after plan until he got a small enough force that he could live with. But WHY? It's one thing if you have to make decisions about what to do when you don't have time to build forces. But this war has been likely, if not certain, for months. What was the downside in having another division in the desert? Were the political, economic, logistic, and troop issues so overwhelming that it couldn't be done? I actually think the costs were pretty minimal.

-I hope that we don't need to fight house to house in Baghdad or Tikrit. I will be thrilled if this all ends tonight. But what if we do have to join that fight? Do we have enough troops?
Someone needs to show me where, because I don't see it, until the 4th ID gets there. If then.

-At least some of the rapid success has to do with Iraqi failures. Not blowing bridges, for example. Did spec ops and the AF contribute to this? Probably. Should it be something that we count on? Of course not. Is Barry McCaffery (or anyone else) wrong to worry about what could go wrong? Again, of course not. Should we count on this in whatever's next? No.

-You're putting an awful lot of weight on the musings of one infantry company XO (probably about 25 years old) with the Post article that you cite. In any case, "Air Force jets, Army AH-64 Apache helicopters and multiple-rocket launchers" - two of the three are Army. And the multiple-rocket launchers (MLRS) are Army artillery - "the dominant tactical weapon on the battlefield" - so says General McCaffery (Kudlow and Cramer, a couple of nights ago).

-Sometimes military officers need a kick in the pants to make needed change. But in not giving them what they ask for (and again, there is no way CENTCOM and V Corps got what they would have preferred), you assume a massive responsibility. Again, it's one thing if you face a political decision to fight and you don't have time to get them what they would like in a perfect world. But it's a different animal if you have the time and you're taking the opportunity to test a new theory.

-Even if this does end tomorrow, I don't think anyone looking at this in a year would say that we had the appropriate amount of ground forces in the south. Turkey's surprise not withstanding, there was no margin for error. One company out of place, one Iraqi tank company sneaking past into our supply convoys, and we would have been facing a disaster, because we had no significant reserves, and no troops with which to secure the areas in the south.

I don't mean to beat a point to death, but I think the reporting on this point is out there. Do not sell short what these people (Army and Marines) have had to do.

Air Force jets, Army AH-64 Apache helicopters and multiple-rocket launchers "destroyed our objective," said Lt. Bevan Stansbury, executive officer of Bravo Company in the 2nd Brigade's 3rd Battalion, 15th Regiment. "So we have no fight right now." "They pretty much destroyed every vehicle in the brigade," Stansbury said. With a trace of disgust, he added, "Now we're just rolling in and will probably be an occupation force."

as the war drags on, any stifled sympathy for the American invasion will tend to evaporate. As more civilians die and more Iraqis see their "resistance" hailed across the Arab world as a watershed in the struggle against Western imperialism, the traditionally despised Saddam could gain appreciable support among his people. So, the Pentagon's failure to send enough troops to take Baghdad fairly quickly could complicate the postwar occupation, to say nothing of the war itself.

It's true that the military picture has seemingly improved since Wright's piece was posted; his how-can-we-trust-the-hawks-who-muffed-the-war-to-remake-the-Middle-East argument has less force than it did even 24 hours ago. But the hawks were surprised by initial resistance in the South (even if it was mainly resistance obtained at gunpoint), and Rumsfeld still did send too few troops, it seems -- even if the war overall is going well so far. So there's still room for doubting the hawks grander rosy scenarios.

Probably the most likely scenario would be about one third of Iraq's armed forces fighting hard, limited use of tactical WMD, and some extensive combat in a few cities. In this most likely case, the campaign would probably last four to eight weeks and result in roughly 500 to 1,000 American combat deaths.

The debate over the use of computer simulations large and small was sharpened when Lt. Gen. William S. Wallace, the commander of the Army V Corps based in Kuwait, remarked that the guerrilla-style resistance of Iraqi militia groups made for an enemy that was 'different from the one we war-gamed against.' The current situation in Iraq, some critics say, may highlight the problem of depending too much on virtual realities for training. They argue that military leaders can become too enmeshed in a gaming scenario to allow for what is actually happening. (My emphasis.)

Anyway - I thought of this today while reading another one of Saddam's dispatches from beyond the grave. It contained the usual BS (how do you know a Ba'athist is lying? His mustache is moving. And we curse it!) and it contained what we now have come to expect from this noted secular despot: explicit religiosity. (Reuters link via the indispensable Command Post.)
"Damn them, and by God, there will be thousands of soldiers fighting for what is right, virtue and faith in defense of the land of prophets and holy places, of belief and devotion," it quoted Saddam as writing in a letter to his niece on April 1 . "This war is not like previous wars. It is truly a jihad (holy war) for the sake of God and the nation. It is a war between Muslims and infidels."
We all know he doesn't mean it; this is a fellow who probably installed drainage channels in the mosque floors in case he needed to use them as torture depots. But it's a reminder that this campaign is not disconnected from 9/11 - it's an integral part of the war. Whoever chose to speak for Saddam did not appeal to pan-Arab solidarity, to socialist duty, to the struggle against globalization, to the need to contain the American hegemony, or the primacy of the rule of international law, the campaign to release "Freaks and Geeks" on DVD, or whatever cause is floating out in the great maelstrom of international contention. Prophets, holy places, belief, devotion, jihad, God, war between Muslims and nonbelievers. Those are the terms."

A front-page news analysis article on Sunday about the political perils faced by President Bush over the war with Iraq misattributed a comment about Saddam Hussein's government being "a house of cards." While some American officials had used the phrase to predict a shorter conflict and a quick collapse of the Iraqi leadership, Vice President Dick Cheney was not among them.

A front-page article on Tuesday about criticism voiced by American military officers in Iraq over war plans omitted two words from an earlier comment by Lt. Gen. William S. Wallace, commander of V Corps. General Wallace had said (with the omission indicated by uppercasing), "The enemy we're fighting is A BIT different from the one we war-gamed against."

In the giddy spirit of the day, nothing could quite top the wish list bellowed out by one man in the throng of people greeting American troops from the 101st Airborne Division who marched into town today. What, the man was asked, did he hope to see now that the Baath Party had been driven from power in his town? What would the Americans bring? "Democracy," the man said, his voice rising to lift each word to greater prominence. "Whiskey. And sexy!"

At the Pentagon briefing, Army Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal said the Medina Division has been incapacitated to nearly the same extent as the Baghdad Division, which he described as "incapable of effective maneuver or defense." He said elements of both divisions are putting up sporadic resistance, but not enough to slow the advance of U.S. units. "The Medina and Baghdad divisions are no longer credible forces," he said.

Washington :: Philippa Thomas :: 1403GMT
Every headline and every morning show here is talking about the rescue of Jessica Lynch. It's a rare good news story in a week when there's been a lot of talk of set backs.
It's a very all-American tale of a teenage soldier who'd never left the United States before she went to the Middle East three weeks ago.
She comes from a small farming community in the state of West Virginia called Palestine where yellow ribbons were put up around her community in honour of her. She had written home before her capture to say that when she came home from the Gulf she wanted to become a teacher.
Last night they had fireworks and celebrations in her home town - this one small success story has really hit the headlines here.

Dear Sir:
I force myself to get through these articles because I usually read most of what you put up on your site.
Do you get positive feedback from this kind of writing? Just curious. Knowing that someone actually likes this will make it possible for me to hug myself, buy myself a felt pen or maybe a pair of socks, and begin to love again. That is, unless it's raining, because that scares me, all the lightning and thunder and big nasty black clouds, but then I feel better because I know someday the sun will come out and warm the earth with its tender golden rays, and then I realize that hey, life is great and if we would all just love each other like I love everyone even though they don't love me, the world would be this great lovefest and that would be lovely, wouldn't it?
Until then, I am going to hide out at home with a big bucket of Haagen-Dazs chocolate ice cream until the world comes to its senses.
- Brian Asmus, Taipei, Taiwan

If it were true that we were just shooting for the moon knowing that it might fail and that we'd then hit them with a more conventional infantry and armor attack, we'd already have our infantry and armor in place. We don't. So I don't find that argument particularly credible.

"the 100,000 troops en route to the battle will give the operational commanders the ability to control the pace and tempo of the fight if we sense trouble."

The administration premised virtually all of its strategy and most of its tactics on the assumption that the civilian population would treat us as liberators. Unfortunately, that basic assumption has been shown itself to be fundamentally flawed. Our military strategy was based on the idea that the Iraqis would be so happy we'd shown up that they wouldn't harrass our supply lines on the way to Baghdad. That hasn't panned out.

Presumably, I'll be haunted one or two months from now when we're off on an easy occupation of Baghdad, governing a peaceful nation of thankful Iraqis, and resting easier since we've cowed Syria, Iran and the Palestinians into quiescence.

They were determined to avoid giving Hussein time to launch missiles with chemical warheads against Israel and its Arab neighbors, torch Iraq's oil fields or launch new massacres that would send waves of Iraqi refugees fleeing into Turkey and elsewhere. They have been largely successful in these objectives so far.

I think it's a very, very good plan, and I have given my opinions many, many times to the civilian leadership. I support this plan. It's a brilliant plan in both its simplicity and its flexibility. And Gen. Franks had a plan that would allow us, if there was early capitulation on the part of the Iraqis, would have allowed us to not have to destroy a large portion of that country. It is flexible enough to handle everything up to the most devastating attacks that we may have to conduct.
But the scope of the operations is all within the original plan, and the flexibility has been demonstrated right from the beginning. When Gen. Franks saw that the oil fields down South might be destroyed as the oil fields were in Kuwait, he quickly sent the ground forces in there and was able to secure over 1,000 oil wells, maybe 80 percent of the Iraqi people's wealth that's in the ground he was able to secure for them for their future. And there's many, many other examples of the plan being set in motion and then circumstances on the ground providing opportunities, like the night that we got the great intelligence on where we thought Saddam was and the very, very specific precise attack.