Who shall lead them?

The Bush/Blair unholy alliance may be faltering, and the troops are only in the Baghdadian suburbs.

How tragic, especially for Mr. Blair, who will likely lose his job over this when the fighting stops.

Blair favors heavy involvement of the UN in administering a postwar reconstruction of Iraq, while Resident Bush insists upon direct US administration. That means "occupation." So much for "liberation." Adding insult to bombardment, the Shrubites, busily bankrupting the federal government with this war and their ridiculous tax cuts, are going to force the Iraqis to use their only viable resource, oil, to pay for the reconstruction. Yes, that same oil that so desperately needed to be "preserved for the Iraqi people" will be hauled out of the ground as fast as US corporations can get it to market, and the Iraqi portion of the profits will go into rebuilding the country our forces have just blown to bits.

Follow the money:

US invades Iraq, all on the public dime. US corporations are given contracts to clean up oil spills, put out fires, and rebuild the physical infrastructure of the entire country. US corporations will also be granted enormous contracts to aid Iraq in retrieving more oil from the ground on a per daily basis than they ever have before. That oil will be sold on the open market, the consulting firms get paid, and the Iraqi share goes immediately into the rebuilding fund, which pays out to US corporations....

...and so on.

Kudos to Private Jessica Lynch for managing to survive in deadly circumstances. My hat is off to you.

Perhaps her debriefing will put to rest the lie about the "captured then executed" POWs.

The media is wall to wall with Private Lynch's rescue, and it is clear that the extraordinary circumstances involved are not the only reason. That she is young, white, and importantly, female, plays heavily into the coverage, and that is too bad. Private Lynch is a trained member of our armed forces, someone who signed up cognizant of the risks involved, and yet the saturation coverage refuses to acknowledge her equal rank and status by the repeated use of her first name only in reference to her. In the context of a war and her experiences as a wounded prisoner and survivor, it is only right that the media refer to her as Private Jessica Lynch. Had she been a male prisoner, proper rank and title would be affixed to her name in most media references. Why not in her case?