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April 30, 2003,11:32pm PST

You have probably noticed, gentle reader, that I have not made a blog entry since about the time we commenced shocking and awing the tiny, third world nation of Iraq. It's not for lack of trying. It's simply that I couldn't write much beyond, "The horror, the horror." Well now that the easy part of this imperial adventure is over, it's time to put the whole thing into perspective.

So, to recap. After our shock and awe campaign failed to do either, the prospect of a long, drawn out, un-telegenic battle, caused military planners to dispense with notions of avoiding civilian targets. In fact, this has turned out to be fairly bloody. Not to worry. All the major networks managed to sanitize this war very well. The average TV viewer won't be having too many nightmares.

Ok, so Saddam Hussein is now listed with Osama bin Laden in the category of "Missing, Dead or Alive." To my knowledge, our last bit of intelligence on his where-abouts did not result in his capture, but did result in the removal of a young woman's head, and other collateral damage. But then, headless is all the rage in Iraqi fashion this spring.

I'm sure it's all been worth it. I know millions of Americans heaved a sigh of relief when a group of about 100 Iraqi's pulled down that statue of Saddam -- or rather watched a Marine tank pull it over. Who could question the jubilation of that crowd? No one but a few naysayers with their wide-angle photos, who say it was just a staged photo-op, in an otherwise empty square, quardoned off by Marines and tanks. Oh, and I guess the massive uprisings of hundreds of thousands of liberated Iraqis demanding a US withdrawl from Iraq, might give a few people qualms.

Much as I'd feared, the war resulted in the loss of many archaelogical artifacts. Now I know Donald Rumsfeld will think I'm going all Henny Penny over this trifle, but I do take the loss of history, going back 7,000 years seriously. Although, in fairness, the oil is safe, and it is, technically, much, much older.

Now we begin the hard work in Iraq. This is the part that T.E. Lawrence described as "messy and slow, like eating soup with a knife." Our liberation/occupation does not appear to going smoothly. We've united the Sunni and Shia populations... against us. Massive anti-American demonstrations have resulted in the shooting deaths and injuries of a number of Iraqi civilians. A recent scuffle with an angry mob, resulted in the deaths of unarmed children.

So, what of the weapons of mass destruction? It would appear that all our top secret intelligence, so sensitive that it could not be shown to congress, allies, or weapons inspectors, has turned up a big goose egg. The results have been so dismal, in fact, that the Pentagon has abandoned those leads, and decided to wait for some agreeable Iraqi to tell us where they are. Besides, it turns out that we did not actually attack Iraq to disarm Saddam Hussein but to send a message to the Arab world.

The upshot, then, is that we've decimated the infrastructure of an evil, but sovereign nation. We've taken the lives of nearly 200 American and British military personnel, and thousands of Iraqi civilians. We've caused the loss of priceless artifacts. We've shocked the world and inspired global outrage. We've damaged both NATO and the United Nations. We've raised the ire of "liberated" native population, risking massive instability in a sensitive region. We did these things to make a show of force and send a message to any potential enemies. All this leaves me with only one question. When did Keyser Soze start writing our foreign policy?