Okay, I'll grant you I didn't really need to add that last sentence. Maybe that "jeering" bit got to me. The sheer glee I see from a lot of people for every setback in Iraq is getting on my nerves, and I've gotten oversensitive. Nobody apparently wants to see the Baathists win, but there are a hell of a lot of folks who want to see us lose. I have no idea how this is reconciled in their heads.

And I never called him a Marxist, or even a leftist. I disagreed with two items in his analysis, and still do.

BTW, some of his ideas for Israel are damn good ones. I always thought they should pick a border, a contiguous one, not some damn "South African Homelands" scattershot deal, and build a huge impenetrable wall around it. The idea of telling some of the settlers outside that the gate is closing in one week, take it or leave it, is particularly appealing, and gives them a real choice: Live in Israel, or relive Masada.

The Palestinians won't just let them live in their little towns, even if they hold the other 95 percent of a new Palestinian state. The idea that not a single Jew shall darken their lands does not seem to bother many people, but there it is.