It just occurred to me that this war would make a good dissertation for a PhD in Sociology. It would be very interesting to study the factors that cause a totalitarian system to lose control over night.


I heard Ann Garrels on NPR this morning report that the Iraqi minders of the "journalists" staying at the Palestine Hotel just didn't show up for work this morning. One, whom they called the money guy, came and tried to get some more money from the reporters, but they told him where he could go. Another Iraqi official who had been pretty mean and threatening to them in the past, was caught trying to steal the car belonging to an Italian news crew. Without Saddam behind him he was begging them not to hurt him. They should have named him Wormtongue.

Another good dissertation topic would be a study of the Arab news media and how they have gone from total denial to acceptance overnight. It fits with what I've read and heard elsewhere about the Arab mentality. They are very fatalistic, and when they see how things are going, they accept it as God's will and go on. This is why resolve on our part is so important in dealing with them. As long as we dithered and didn't slam them back, they assumed we were wimps and they could attack us with impunity. Maybe they should study us a little more.

"The pride the Arabs felt in the initial stages of the invasion, before those legendary 'pockets of resistance' halting the advance of the world's only superpower were revealed as a myth, has been replaced by immense shame and humiliation. The images of US soldiers taking a picnic in the heart of Baghdad will haunt the Arab psyche for generations to come "

"America now rules the world, either directly or by proxy; and there is nothing anyone can do about it," he concludes.

"Nothing, that is, but wait for history to take its course, for Fortune's wheel to turn as it inexorably does, crushing underneath those who once danced on top of it. But not in our lifetime. Yes, there will be more terrorism, and Osama Bin Laden - or at least his infamous voice - was heard once more yesterday, calling for suicide attacks and thus giving more easy justification, as he did on Sept. 11, to America's imperial ambition. Thanks, Osama, you've done us all about as much good as George W. Bush. Both are two sides of the same coin."

Yes, they need to study us more. They still don't get it. Couldn't we build some madrassah's for them?