I turn my back for a second....

Jeez. My daughter and I go to an NIT Tournament basketball game (SDSU 67 UCSB 62 in OT...woo hoo!) and war breaks out. How the hell did that happen?

Oh, that's right. Someone gave the car keys to a drunk, and now people have to die.

George W Bush, whose own military experience was tragically cut short when he stopped showing up for duty, has launched an unprovoked war on a small, beatable country because....well, the head guy did try to kill his dad. He will be lauded by a complacent media for exhibiting patience for waiting an hour and a half after the deadline. You can just imagine him pestering Dick Cheney all evening ("Now! Can I do it now? Pleeeeeeeease! Lemme do it! C'mon...Now ?")

Now the administration somehow wants us to believe that by raining two-thousand pound bombs down on Baghdad and killing thousands of civilians, the survivors will emerge from the rubble waving little American flags, disregarding the fact they have just been invaded. A whole country in the throes of the Stockholm Syndrome. Call it Richard Perles' wet dream.

What did the world think?

MUSLIM LEADERS in Asia condemned the U.S. attack on Thursday and said Americans would pay.

A response from the 30-million-strong moderate Muhammadiyah Muslim group in Indonesia came within minutes of the United States and Britain launching attacks on Iraq.

“This is not an attack on Islam but an attack on humanity,” said Syafii Maarif, head of the organization. Malaysia’s conservative Islamic opposition said Allah would bring about the U.S. superpower’s eventual downfall.
“This despicable war exposes the ugliness of America and its allies,” said Abdul Hadi Awang, the president of Parti Islam se-Malaysia. PAS is convinced that this war is the start of America’s destruction because Allah will not let any major power reign supreme forever."

Well. So far so good.

Meanwhile, here in the states, Civil Defense Block Captain Andy Sullivan is keeping his eyes on fellow travelers and other seditious types who might have the gall to exercise their First Amendment rights. Especially those rabble rousers at the NY Times (who, coincidentally, fired Andy some time back):

RAINES WATCH: Now that the war has begun, you can rest assured that the New York Times will go into overdrive to discredit it. Today's offering has the following headline: "Move to War Leaves Some Feeling Alienated." In fact, the story is about liberals in California, a somewhat odd subject for a story the day hostilities begin. Readers are hereby asked to keep an eye out for the Times' forthcoming attempts in news stories to broaden and focus on dissent at home.

Isn't life during wartime fun?