My biggest concern about a post-Saddam Iraq, also expressed by many who oppose this war, is the potential for a fundamentalist Muslim takeover at some point.

Unfortunately, up until now, any form of secularity in Muslim nations has usually been imposed by a rather ruthless government. Saddam is a prime example, but I also remember the Shah of Iran. Did we know we were trading a modern dictatorship for an Ayatollah at the time? Turkey, although better than some, does not win any human rights awards in its methods for suppressing fundamentalism. I don't know how Indonesia manages.

What are the Shiites looking for as a goal in Iraq? I found out only yesterday that two out of the three Kurdish factions that were involved in the thwarted revolts in Iraq after the Gulf War were associated with the Taliban.

We are going to attempt to organize something that gives the Iraqi people a free, non-fundamentalist, democratic government. Made up of many different groups with different ideas of how a nation should be won. At least when we democratized Japan, it was a monolithic society.

IMO, this is going to be at least as tough as the military operation, if less hazardous.

If we pull it off, it may be a first in the Middle East. Hell, if Bush manages to do this, and doesn't get a Nobel Prize, we should boycott Sweden.