We recently had a visit from an American couple. They are in their 60s, and are wonderful friends, wonderful people. "Salt of the earth" would fit them. They are God fearing (but not fundamentalist), family loving, peace loving folk, ones we are lucky to count among our very best friends. Look up "nice" in the dictionary and I think you'll find their picture.

In delicately discussing Iraq with them, we found they had an interesting outlook, one that I suspect is shared by many Americans. I believe it is shared because I think they are much like many Americans - good, solid, caring, intelligent people.

Their view was that, even though the evidence presented had a lot of holes or thins spots (eg as far as proof of WMD in Iraq, the link between Saddam and Al Qaida, etc), "we have to trust our leaders and trust that they have more information than they are giving out; if not they surely wouldn't be leading us into this terrible war".

They seemed confident in the ability of the US to win the war, and were absolutely sure of the evilness of Saddam, but still hated the thought of war.

It seems that a majority of Americans are willing to put all their trust in "the government", and that surprises me. On US money it says "In God We Trust" - I haven't seen any coins that mention GWB. And besides, it seems that in many other ways, American have a healthy (or even unhealthy) distrust of Government.

Is there a dissonance there, or am I missing something?