Well, time to post my four or five cents' worth on the Iraqi War. Bush will rue the day he undertook this mistaken crusade. It's not that Bush and his neocon cronies are necessarily wrong in attempting to disarm Iraq and do away with a horrible regime. There is a time for both pacifism and war, and now that the troops have been committed, there is only a single choice: ultimate victory. Nevertheless, this war shouldn't have begun at all, at least not now. The neocons planned this war long before Bush was elected; they never bought into the conclusion of the first gulf war. That conclusion was a mess-up of the Elder Bush admin. First, they didn't destroy the Republican Guard when they had the chance. Second, and most reprehensible, they encouraged the Iraqis--Kurds and Shiites--to rise up against Saddam, only to abandon them to the slaughter. Too much manipulation, too much Machiavellianism, has haunted the Republicans. Thus, Gulf War II is to erase the foul memory of their mistakes.It's amazing that these generals and politicians whine about how the Iraqis violate the "rules of war." Has any country ever obeyed those rules completely? Doubtful. And when one's country is invaded, right or wrong, it's arguable that all strategies are appropriate to the combatant defenders. Jesse Ventura made this point in an interview earlier this week. Yes, the Saddam regime is evil, ugly and uncivilized. But would they be engaging in these tactics if US and UK troops weren't overrunning Iraq? Last week, a billion dollars' worth of cruise missiles were unleashed on that miserable country. Was there no other better use of that billion dollars? But, thanks to the war, we can forget about problems in the economy. We can forget that, perhaps, that one billion dollars added to NASA's budget might have prevented the Columbia disaster. The Bush team nickles-and-dimes the domestic agenda, while coddling their rich cronies. Some cracks have begun to show in the regime, in the resignation of Richard Perle (chief architect of the Iraq debacle) over his "feeding at the trough" of both Global Crossing and the Pentagon.We stand at a crossroads in world history. The US has undertaken the lonely course of an imperial civilization. Weilding ultimate power, and smashing your enemies, is satisfying in a reptilian-brain sort of way. But once that role is assumed, there will always be someone, somewhere, who will try to knock the great nation off its pedestal. When thousands of US troops are killed and wounded in the eventual Battle of Baghdad, someone will be called accountable. It reminds me of the first real death-blow to the Roman Empire: the Battle of Adrianople in AD 375. "Pride goeth before a fall." The consequences of these ill thought out actions will reverberate for years.