From the long driveway that leads up to Iraq's huge, yellow-walled Ministry of Defense, a Bofors 40-mm. dual-barrel gun last week glared out at the city of Baghdad. Backing it up were leveled .50-cal. machine guns and recoilless rifles mounted on Jeeps. And even such visitors as got past the gun-toting sergeant at the ministry door were never more than a few feet from the business end of an automatic weapon. Padding up and down the corridors of the ministry, young officers of the Iraqi army kept firm hand on submachine guns or machine pistols...

...the armed camp that is Baghdad's Defense Ministry was a faithful reflection of Iraq's mood and condition.

...the land that some say was the Garden of Eden is a place of terror, plot and counterplot. Its prisons are jammed with an estimated 5,000 political prisoners and ex-officials, and its lampposts are periodically festooned with bodies.

...Iraq is a place where once-eminent citizens disappear without a trace, a land where fortnight ago the dock workers of Basra, outraged by a friendly reference to Egypt's President Nasser, killed and mutilated a customs clerk and—the modern-day hallmark of Iraqi politics—dragged his body through the streets.

Such is the nightmarish atmosphere...

...have prepared a list of local employers, merchants and professional men to be liquidated as soon as the opportunity offers.

NO, this one:

From almost half a century ago when Bush was a small child.

IT'S NORMAL.

I wonder if Will Durant felt this way all the time...