France ate my homework.

I am, as always, torn and arguing with myself. Call it the INTP disease. With that said, here are a couple of things my brain's managed to settle on for a few minutes before changing its mind.

George Bush will have his war. The fact that this Administration has been pushing to invade Iraq since it was installed by the Supreme Court makes me incredibly skeptical of any claims of imminent danger by a regime that by all accounts is only interested in keeping itself afloat. I keep searching for reasons for us going to war—because I'd like to think that it's about more than just oil or a personal grudge, but I fail to find them. I am bewildered, frustrated, and incredibly saddened. I am specially saddened—and anguished—by those who proclaim that sending their children to war and cheering the government on in squandering their lives is the only way to support them [the troops].

I am still astonished at the fact that the US failed to muster the necessary votes for another UN Security Council resolution on the issue. Sure, now Bush and the couple of countries he managed to have on his side—Britain, predictably, and Spain, and later Portugal (not a exactly a who's who of world power)—point the finger to the French-threatened veto, but one only has to look at the extremely short list of countries doing the pointing in the first place to see that, even if the French had folded (and an argument can be made that, had the rest of the Council shown support for the US and British proposed course of action, France would indeed have folded) to see that the support just wasn't there. The US has effectively squandered whatever good will the attacks of September 11 had fostered abroad—and there was an incredible outporing of sympathy and good will then—with its clumsy-at-best diplomatic maneuvering. Colin Powell, perhaps the sole voice of reason of the lot, has been steamrolled by the Bush-Rumsfeld machine, where sledgehammers and anvils pass for subtlety and diplomacy. And, sad as it is, compared to Rumsfeld, Bush is positively suave—a veritable James Bond.

When I'm in charge, and right after I've made sure that Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks never come close to making another romantic comedy (because first thing's first), the second order of business will be a muzzle for Rumsfeld and a speech therapist for Bush.