And you're on the script-writing team. ;)

You know, those manic-depressive 1970s ones. Yuk yuk yuk -- bomb audience with conflict -- kiss and make up -- yuk yuk yuk. This and commercials in 30 minutes!! Scrambling an audience's brains and manipulating their feelings makes it easy to sell product, be it merchandise or ideas, in the wake of the resulting confusion.

Disagreeing with you is not obtuse, despite the acute distress it causes you. ;)

Peaceful protest against violence is not cowardly. The proponents of violence are usually the ones with the big sticks, you see. So a person could develop a concussion, or a tax audit, or any number of things if he protests, especially if he protests effectively.

Americans are notorious for not being aware of warfare -- or fare of any kind -- outside our own backyard. This is not confined to anti-war protesters. A lot of youse guys have admitted to being unaware of the extent of the Taliban's persecution of women and girls, in spite of attention women's organizations here lavished on the problem, until after 9-11. Maybe that makes you dumb. ;)

Now, as to protesters fixated on America and Bush:

Nobody asked Bush to run for office. This rather indicates that he was prepared for fixation. So it's not all adulation. Pooooor baby. He has a staff to help him deal. It goes with the job.

If the protesters are American, well, duh, it's their job to protest their own country's policies if they disagree. So in the case of Americans protesting against (or in favor of) American policy, there is no case.

Foreigners can protest all they want, too, but it won't have any real influence unless Americans will themselves choose to take the case to the American government. Which is also kinda the point. We will decide whether the protest is: a) genuine or orchestrated; b) intelligent and well-informed, or not; and c) something we really give a rat's patoot about. Americans have a long and august history of ignoring the world when we want to.

Where were the protests over other wars, you ask? Did you even try a simple Yahoo search? (Hint: +antiwar +protest +[region of choice] or +peace +protest +[region of choice].) Have you looked at Human Rights Watch or www.antiwar.com? Take a look at antiwar.com's sources page if you think that peace protest groups want their supporters to be ignorant. Notice they go out of their way to mention that not all these sources will be in agreement with their site's aims.

Throwing out incendiary statements to get a reaction is childish. Having the nerve to be outraged when called on them is hypocritical. Claiming one didn't mean it when one does it over and over is either dumb or deceitful, and possibly both.

But I didn't mean you. ;)

Not much I didn't. ;)

yuk yuk yuk
;)

Mary Anne