I'm not surprised to see some of my friends and associates (not necessarily on this list...I actually do interact with people off-list) switching sides from being "anti-war" to the other side. They natter about how Saddam was a tyrant (true enough, and there are a hundred other such tyrants), to how he must have had the magical word WMD (no evidence so far, and he certainly didn't use them when he should have), and how this will prove to the A-rabs that America stands tall (debatable). I think of this as warporn. Seeing the tanks blowing up stuff, seeing the "embedded" reporters riding atop the Bradley fighting vehicles like Lawrence of Arabia, seeing what a trillion dollars of defense spending can put into the skies over Iraq...all a kind of warporn. I was and am against the war for a very straightforward and principled reason: it is not a valid function of United States government to be the world's policemen, to be going around removing national figures we have decided we don't like. Whether it results in cheaper oil for Chevron (at the expense of one hundred billion dollars for the rest of us) is not a basis for starting a war. (Oh, I forgot...Congress shall have the power to declare war....but they didn't. This is one of those "police actions" that are not actual legal wars. Maybe the vets should be denied the special pay and death benefits accruing in actual wars.) The U.S. claimed Saddam was a monstrous threat, with a powerful army, with huge caches of "WMD." (Sounds like Israel. Sounds like India. Sounds like Pakistan. Sounds like us, the U.S.) The U.N. inspectors were unable to find the supposed WMD. (The Al-Samoud missile being a pathetic example where the missile met the allowable range with a warhead mounted, but failed the allowable range without a warhead...so the U.S. decided the missile without a warhead was a "WMD" because it exceeded the b.s. allowable range by a handful of miles. Something out of a Saturday Night Live sketch.) The U.N. was unable to find the supposed huge caches...and so far the swarming U.S. troops have failed to do so. Rummy keeps saying "We know they're there...we'll find them soon." (This is about time for Rummy to tell the CIA to throw down the throw down gun.) The Iraqi army was what it has always appeared to be: a Turd World primitive army based on graft and corruption and intimidation of non-officers by officer toadies. In other words, not a serious fighting force. And yet they were portrayed as threatening the world. As Chomsky notes, the Big Lie has been hinted at in such a way that more than half the sheeple in the U.S. are now convinced that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11. (This whole episode ought to be a major new chapter in "Manufacturing Consent.") I am ashamed of this once liberty-seeking nation and I am ashamed of my friends and associates who have fallen for the warporn and embraced the current imperialism. --Tim May "In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot." -- Mark Twain