One argument that I've seen the so-called liberals use in the debate on whether or not to go get Saddam and put his head on a pike is the one I'll call the "Well, What About Him?" argument.

In this lovely line of compassionate argument, they say, "Well, Saddam is a bad man, we admit that." They then argue that if we set this precedent, it would somehow be unfair. What about North Korea, and China, and whomever else they can think of? We can't take all those Bad Guys down, can we? They have big armies and nukes. It'd cost a lot of blood and treasure that the people are reluctant to spend.

So, since we can't change things for the better everywhere, the only correct, moral, fair thing to do is ignore all the little tin-pot dictators with overgrown police forces and let them have their way with their citizens, too.

This sounds so zany to me that I have a hard time believing folks who otherwise seem intelligent can espouse this idea, yet they do. You hear it from both liberals and libertarians. Evidently, they've forgotten what the root word from which they both derive their chosen labels, liber, means. "Free."

I had one guy, who I'll let remain anonymous (I'm truly embarrassed for him), actually write and say, "Who's next, Zimbabwe?" as if it were some devastating argument that trumped anything I had to say about the humanitarian reasons to take down Iraq.

Yeah, putting Mugabe's head on a pike is OK with me. Except after reading this, I don't think he oughta be next. I think he oughta be first. It's not enough that he's starving his political opposition, now his troops are, by direction, raping the children of his foes on a grand scale. "Hundreds of girls as young as 12 are being raped or forcibly kept as concubines in rural Zimbabwe by President Robert Mugabe's youth militia as part of a campaign that human-rights lawyers have branded "systematic political cleansing" of the population."

Where are the liberals? Where are the feminist voices, where is the Church, and the ICC, and the EU, and the folks pissing and moaning that we were abusing the poor Taliban detainees by making them kneel while they were being photographed? Where is Amnesty International, the UN, John Paul and Sharpton and Jesse and Bill and Hilary? Where's Chomsky and Sontag? Where's Sheila Jackson Lee? Where are the black church leaders? Or the white ones? For that matter, where the fuck is Bush43?

For what sin are these people the world's orphans?

No soup for you, my Zimbabwe friends. Sucks for you that you aren't sitting on top of some vital American interest. Sorry your whole continent is one big freakin' abattoir, and none of the folks that got it that way (look straight north and you'll see who I mean) are willing to clean up the mess, if it means going to more effort than frowning a bit and signing a few resolutions.

Bush needs to drop the 82nd, or a few Marine Brigades, the Boy Scouts, me and a few rednecks, somebody, anybody, down there, right now, with the specific mission to kill Mugabe and everybody in his Rolodex. We can't go get Saddam for a few more months anyway, and this will only take about fifteen minutes. I don't give an amoeba's ass about nationbuilding, international law, or if the next guy in line is as bad as Mugabe. If he is, we'll take him down, too. We need to make it real clear that "regime change" means removing those that run them from amongst the quick to amongst the dead. Sooner or later, sooner I think, they'll figure out that being a Bad Man really lowers your life expectancy, and people will quit applying for the job of Head Henchman before we run out of ammo.

Two words for ya, baby. Pax Americana. Get used to it. It's the liberal thing to do.

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It's certainly not news that Iraqi air defenses and US air patrols are taking potshots at each other - it's been going on just about ever since GWI died down to the current low level of intensity.

But what we may be seeing here are the first salvos of GWII, where the critical field of battle will be the media. We smacked some Iraqi air defense radars today, and Saddam protests that we hit "civilian" targets. "At 0855 a.m. local time (12:55 a.m. EDT) today U.S. and British planes...flew 35 sorties using air bases in Kuwait," the Iraqi military spokesman said in a statement carried by the official Iraqi News Agency (INA).

"The enemy attacked civilian and service installations in Basra province, killing eight people and wounding nine others," the spokesman said."

Expect to see a whole lot more of this in the coming months, as Saddam tries to play the collateral damage card to undermine support for the war to toss him out of Iraq.

Meanwhile, Cheney made a speech today outlining the need to go and get him now, close on the heels of Tom Delay's speech on the same topic. The administration is starting to make it's case, as it should.

Meanwhile, the DoD has just informed reservists in many of the critical combat support billets that they are liable to be kept on active duty for up to two years, for the very first time since the formation of the all-volunteer forces in 1973.

For better or for worse, the decision has been made. The administation, Congress, and the press will all prance through the rituals of the kabuki, for custom's sake. We are now like the passengers in a rollercoaster, as it clinks and clanks it's way up the climb to start the ride - there's no getting off the ride now until the very end.

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