Who knew?

It ain't the way thatcha do it, in fact; it is whatcha do.

"Consider the source" is probably what we'll hear about the latest bleak assessment of where our Mess O'Potamia is headed. Apostropher's right; everybody tried to tell the Administration where it was headed before the shooting started. But hey, the majority rules, right? All the polls said support for the war was over 50%, which is a higher number than any Presidential candidate has gotten on Election Day since 1988. And make no mistake, 43 learned the lesson of 41; if you gain tremendous support after a military success and the economy is circling the bowl, the only way to stay on top is to keep fighting. Hell, isn't that pretty much how Rome built her empire?

So, under the simple schoolyard dogma that it's easier to get forgiveness than permission, the hawks (whatever their affiliations) decided to just go for it, and devil take the hindmost. And every step of the way we've blared our own horn about bringing Democracy and Liberty to benighted corners of the globe. What kind of image are we giving Democracy? In a democracy, whenever a majority can be cobbled together to commit any old global crime, the whole damn population can sit around and wring their hands after without blame -- as if the possibility that maybe we'll fire the guy who did it at some point in the future means the crime doesn't matter. It does.

If Benito Mussolini preferred fifty thousand rifles to fifty thousand votes, that's because he understood that on the stage of history, rifles get clearer results. The Iraq adventure has written the lead for the first quarter (at least) of the new century, and there's nothing about how cool our Constitutional government is.