He needs me pimpin' his schtuff about like the boys in ZZ need more facial hair, but still, I cannot in good conscience not steer any of y'all that don't know Lilek's web site there. No one I've read on the Web writes as consistently well, no matter what the topic.

His stuff about his baby daughter, the Gnat, reminds me so much of MK's growing up with me I find myself with tears of remembrance. His photopoetic look at his dog, Jasper, simply makes me want to punch my monitor in envy.

Yet, he can warblog as well as anyone. Here, he states the humanitarian reasons for taking Saddam down: "In WW 2 everyone knew that taking out Hitler meant uprooting the culture of Nazism - a thing whose roots were tangled in German identity. But there is no such thing as Saddamism. His statues will topple and his secret police will be strung up and spat upon, and for all the chaos that will follow you will have millions of people who will be freed of the old fear; millions of men no longer fed to the guns; millions of women who will not see their sons shoved to the front. We’ll see the tours of the weapons factories, the torture cells, hear the stories of the dissidents, understand in all its stultifying detail the extent to which this cult penetrated every aspect of civil, intellectual, scientific and spiritual life. And at some point when we realize how bad it was for them, and how few suffered to lift the yoke, and how they have their future in their own hands for the first time in decades, it will be incumbent upon the critics of the war to prove why it would have been better to keep Saddam in power. And why they thought the gossamer strands of diplomatic disapproval would ever bind his arms."

There's so much more here than I've mentioned. Go check it out, but not before you have a day or two to waste.

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While rummaging around in my list of referrrers today, I stumbled across a blog that was new to me, One Hand Clapping, by Donald Sensing.

It's an excellent site, with several well-written essays on various topics. I would particularly point out his essay, Precision Weapons, Abject Defeat, and Reshaping Societies. It discusses how our new way of waging war, which minimizes civilian casualties, may work to defeat our longer-range goal of winning the peace.

I look forward to reading them all, but CG is tugging at my elbow, dragging me off to chauffeur her around Texas. It's her day off, and she wants to go antiquing.

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