I find it hard to believe, Roger, after our recent entanglements over Tienemen Square and the NEA, but I pretty much agree with your position about being a reluctant supporter of the war (though I would have liked to know if sanctions alone could have done the job - alas, one of the national faults of we Americans is impatience, but what can you expect from a people who, by and large, didn't want to or couldn't wait for the grass to get greener in their "old" countries and so sped away to a brand new continent).

I write this voice card a little over a month since the hostilities were officially declared over by our President. Now Iraq is spinning apart in internal chaos. The few tanks we allowed Iraq to keep, so that it could defend it's territorial integrity (and hence help insure the "security and stability of the region," we are told) against outside predators, are now turned on it's own people. As of today's Sunday NY Times, the Shiites have been "contained and are being pacified" by Republican Guard conterattacks in the south of the country, and the Kurds are tenuously holding on to their domains in the north.

The U.S., after Bush publically asked that the Iraqis remove Saddam H., has been rather unenthusiactic in getting involved in helping the people who want to do just that. The message to the world: We (the U.S. and its western allies) encourage self determination, but it had better not be done too messily, and the new forces taking control had better be people we can "do business with," to quote Margaret Thatcher.

Ah, that new world order. You gotta love it, dontcha?