What I care about is the several million or tens of millions of people for which our actions have been akin to tossing them a match while they are standing hip-deep in Coleman fuel.

What I care about is how we're going to run a modern economic infrastructure when the bulk of the very thing that infrastructure is contingent on is in the middle a vast multi-party war zone rife with ethnic cleansing and all-out genocide.

What I care about is history's judgment on my culture.

What I care about is what happened to the ideals of my culture, and who turned out the light on our illuminated ideals.

What I care about is that our information age civilization just got pop-quizzed by a mentality out of the bronze age. And we appear to have lost big.

What I care about is that I have never seen this country both so divided and the well of political discourse so poisoned. Civil wars grow out of this kind of soil- I don't think thats likely, but what the right did to political discourse in this country was irrevocably and mind-numbingly STUPID.

Yes, you're right. The Democratic partys only failing in the origin of this issue was a failure to sand up and speak out. However, we all own this now. Iraq is a national tragedy, not a republican tragedy. And we will all suffer the consequences, as I fear so will our children.

Maybe I'm all wrong. But I'm as sure of this as I was of my views about the case for war and about the long term prospects for our success- and I turned out to be very accurate on those. So while I hope that we will not reap a whirlwind of biblical proportions, my best assay of the facts tell me that my hope is misplaced.

Yeesh. Might as well change my handle again to Cassandra... to feminine... C.A. Zandra perhaps?