The use of the Q & A format was employed to establish a pattern, the end product of which is this: There are credible reasons why we hadn't details before Saddam's route, disappearance, and loss of power. Terror on the part of scientist-witnesses would be one reason. All those reasons have now gone away. So what's the deal?

I grasped the Administration's position just fine, thank you. Faced with the objection that civilized nations don't attack other nations without a clear case for self-defense, the Administration used the existence and the will to use WMD as the justification for a first-strike pre-emptive attack against Iraq. No existence, no justification. We now use the liberation of the Iraqi people as our justification. The problems here are two: 1) the end (liberation) doesn't justify the means (first-strike), unless one wishes to rewrite the rules for civilized behavior among nations, and 2) the Iraqi people have been relieved of a tyrant, not liberated. Liberation has implied in it a certain degree of freedom from fear. To trade fear born of tyranny for fear born of anarchy is not liberation.

When Iraq has a free and democratic government, let me know. I'll throw a party. So far, I see mob violence, assassination of clerics by the followers of other clerics, and some guy who declared himself the mayor of Bagdad. Democracy takes time. It can't be installed, especially not in a nation where there is no living memory of democratic institutions among most of the population.

If you think Don is harping, imagine how I feel reading some of the post serials I read here. The "Islam Is Love" bulletins will serve as an example. (Sorry, Phil -- you have a memorable subject line, if only through dint of sheer repetition...) There's enough harping here to accompany the Choir Invisible. And you can take that to the savings & loan.

Regards--
Mary Anne