This bit was written as part of Mark Twain's long protest on the Philippine-American war. Whether there is a parallel with our efforts in Iraq will no doubt depend on the politics of the viewer.

It's worth noting that someone with Mark Twain's attitudes and personality would have a life expectancy under a totalitarian regime roughly similar to that of a mu-meson particle in a nuclear accelerator.

Nobody's a bigger Mark Twain fan than I am. It is indeed fortunate for all of us that enough people were willing to fight and die to protect Twain's right to crack wise about their efforts and to preserve his talent into a ripe old age.

And the hard truth is that regardless of how the whole Iraq thing pans out in the next couple of months, that nation's troubles will end only when Saddam's head is on a pike so high that the carrion birds will need oxygen masks to get to it.