Some random thoughts from a seriously bewildered mind:
I have a lot of trouble with major media outlets paying huge sums of money to retired generals to second guess their colleagues in the field. Maybe it helps keep them off the payrolls of arms manufacturers, but I doubt it.
One of them was featured on ABC news last night. The anchor had the nerve to ask him if the lack of evidence of weapons of mass destruction thereby negated the casus belli.
I can't honestly reproduce the exact quote here because I was cooking dinner at the time, but I can give you the gist.
The general said that since we had obviously won the war, such questions have no relevance.
I have rarely seen a national network anchor taken aback, but this one was. After a prolonged silence, he asked if victory precluded such considerations.
The general, with a smarmy smile, replied, "Precisely."
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There is an angry feeling in this country right now that frightens me. The mindless sheep that have blindly followed our country into war now want to turn against those of us who had the nerve to think for ourselves. The bully has subdued the weaklings and now seeks other outlets for his cowardly rage.
We who hold that war is an uncivilized way to settle disagreements are about to be battered into submission. See, they will say, the Iraqis welcome our conquering armies. We have overthrown a brutal dictator and you would have had us hold back.
They are right. We disarmed an international criminal who, as it turns out, either had no weapons of mass destruction or didn't have the balls to use them. It doesn't matter. We chose our fight and fought it.
How come we didn't disarm Idi Amin, or Auguste Pinochet, or Alberto Stroessner? Because it didn't serve to advance the interests of our moneyed elite. Saddam threatened their income, the others sought to preserve it.
Follow the money.
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Is there any substance more addictive than Brach's Maple Nut Goodies? About once a year, I buy a bag and eat the whole thing at one sitting. Even when they are stale. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.
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There is one thing that keeps me from going completely around the bend in these stressful times. Her name is Reiko. She understands, with a Japanese reasoning that I am only beginning to understand, that there is nothing that we as individuals can do to stop the madness perpetrated by our leaders. The only thing we can do is to live our lives to the fullest and exist for the moment. The rest is irrelevant. By living in the moment and exulting in the pleasure thereof, we refute those who would have us believe that joy is sinful; that life is a penance to be endured; that we must make ourselves miserable in order to achieve a problematic afterlife.
We spend a lot of time playing. Snowboarding on the slopes, enjoying the pleasures of her gift for cooking, and doing everything we can to please each other. As a nominally Christian clergyman, I believe in an afterlife. As a cynical journalist, I'm placing my bets on the one we have in our immediate grasp.
The one thing I know for sure is that I will not have any regrets when it comes time to pay the piper. Reiko has taught me the meaning of joie de vivre. I cannot imagine a greater gift. And that is my definition of love.
1:28:17 AM 
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