As Mercury has turned direct, I guess earth caught up with it, it's a punk planet too hot too small, I will mercuriously create anew. Let us all stop, sit, think, and talk this stuff out. Okay we got a dust-storming, car-bombing, infrastructure-chancy, spirit-sucking updated version of Vietnam happening once again on our nightly TV. Witness the entropy of America's strength - we couldn't stand not exercising our powers, but in all the past there have been regrets over throwing the troops against a distant coast, what a sad example the Alcibades invasion of Sicily during the Peloponesian Ware obviously sets, the Vietnam analog is palpible, but now look at at us. Sure casualty levels are at manageable levels versus the 300-dead a week I saw every Thursday in my paper when I was a kid, but the end-result of this adventure is hardly defined, We opened a can of worm, a freaking can of jumbly wigglies, squiggling borders and messing relationships. We did Iraq but Iran was always more powerful and dangerous, and the invasion of Iraq put them on High Alert, and probably convinced them that they must have nukes in order to deter invasion. Whereas after the Gylf War Saddam was basically mad and there was no serious WMD's happening there cuz the underlings knew they mustn't implicate themselves aginst the US-UK-etc in any way or suffer. So we conquered a country we knew we could beat, for reaons of location location location, the so-called fertile crescent is a croosroads, but how to rule? - Saddam made the trains run on time, and smashed down separatism, but give them the vote and maybe federalism seems lousy.

If we withdraw now as my lib friends (I don't have conservative friends because I like people who can think, even if I disagree, and conservatives think from the gut and their talk by and large is uninteresting and they should all take Logic 101 and then reflect) urge, what happens - civil war? Something bad, Iraq goes psycho, the whole mideast blows up? Like leaving a toddler in charge of the cutlery. I defer to the Colin Powell Pottery Barn doctrine. And it's definitely broken, it's been in sad shape since the Gulf War, with the sanctions and the drift under the deluded killer mandarin.