. I am not gloating: prolonged war with lots of urban fighting (and anything resembling popular support for SH) would have even more catastrophic consequences than envisioned three-day cakewalk (and not only obvious immediate cost in life on both sides).

I heard a journalist/expert tonight say "that if you were to go by Hersh's piece (in the New Yorker) you would think that we had lost the war". I went back and re-read it. I didn't get that impression, but I can see how somebody might.

I'm with you. I couldn't gloat at any difficulties. By the same token, I still see a fair amount of uncertainty ahead. Over soon? Who knows?

I read with interest this report in Forbes (left wing magazine!) which only reinforced my cynical suspicions about the administration's shifting justifications for the invasion. No WMD?.... Oh, Oh, .....Liber-A-tion!

Don't get me wrong. I still leave open the possibility that our former buddy Saddam (hey, Saddam, YOU SUCK!) could unlease a poison gas attack so as to go down in flames. I just never trusted the reason-du-jour of Bush/Cheney.

Hersh cites a former CIA dude Robert Baer in his article. Baer has his own piece in the latest Atlantic Monthly entitled The Fall of the House of Saud . Very interesting. Depressing. Our stalwart allies....ummmm....corrupt, decadent, hypocritical playboys with whom the Cheneys and Condoleeza Rices seem to have formed an inseperable (deadly?) economic embrace.