That's what we used to tell women to do if rape was inevitable. "And maybe you won't get hurt." The guy in the ski mask here is named Operation Liberty Shield, and based on what we're seeing around the country, the collective American will is slowly bending toward the idea that Iraq will be a bellum juste because nobody wants to get stuck holding a sackful of bad feelings.

Casualities should be light. As we saw last night, Iraqi forces are already trying to surrender, and this morning an "anonymous official" in Washington reports that intercepted Iraqi radio traffic reveals grave "consternation" within a number of Iraqi military units, including those of the Republican Guard—the ones being backed up with special assassination squads empowered to kill defectors.

While this indicates that our troops aren't likely to meet serious resistance, there is the matter of the oil wells to consider. The source mentioned above confirms that Iraqi soldiers are currently in the process of sabotaging oil rigs.

The troops are removing safety valves used for automatic shutdown during accidents, he said.

The Test of Time

We aren't passing it. To get some perspective on where we are, you might want to consider Cicero's Speech in Defence of the Proposed Manilian Law, which he delivered to the Roman Senate in 66 B.C. on the occasion of a debate as to whether unlimited military force should be given to Pompey in Asia Minor to depose a Saddam Hussein-like character named Mithridates.

It seems to me that I ought to speak in the first place of the sort of war that exists...The safety of our friends and allies is at stake...The most certain and the largest revenues of the Roman people are at stake; and if they be lost, you will be at a loss for the luxuries of peace, and the sinews of war...And since you have at all times been covetous of glory and greedy of praise beyond all other nations, you have to wipe out that stain [arising] from the fact that [Mithridates], who has not only never yet suffered any chastisement worthy of his wickedness, but, now, twenty-three years after that time, is still a king...Indeed up to this time your generals have been contending with the king so as to carry off tokens of victory rather than actual victory.

But Mithridates employed all the time which he had left to him, not in forgetting the old war, but in preparing for a new one; and, after he had built and equipped very large fleets, and had got together mighty armies from every nation he could...in order that, as you would by that means have war waged against you in the two parts of the world the farthest separated and most remote of all from one another, by two separate enemies warring against you with one uniform plan, you, hampered by the double enmity, might find that you were fighting for the empire itself...

And therefore it often happens that the produce of an entire year is lost by one rumor of danger, and by one alarm of war. What do you think ought to be the feelings of those who pay us tribute, or of those who get it in, and exact it, when two kings with very numerous armies are all but on the spot?

It will, therefore, become your humanity to protect a large number of those citizens from misfortune; it will become your wisdom to perceive that the misfortune of many citizens cannot be separated from the misfortune of the republic....Consider, then, whether you ought to hesitate to apply yourselves with all zeal to that war, in which the glory of your name, the safety of your allies, your greatest revenues, and the fortunes of numbers of your citizens, will be protected at the same time as the republic.

12:48:09 PM