This last Holy Thursday, nearly two chiliads from the day of the night of the Last Supper, when Jesus transformed bread and wine into his Flesh and Blood for his disciples to eat, (proving that it's actually OK to eat meat during Lent) I'm sitting up in the office around early dusk, when C&C (Caesar and Cleopatra), my two “German Wolfhounds,” start going berzerk, barking and lunging on their stakeout chains.

This is not unusual, them being sighthounds. Though these animals are friendly to a fault around humans and other animals close to their size or larger, (they completely ignore the cows, sheep, and horses at my parent's place) once you reach a certain minimum size threshold, below about fifteen pounds I think, breeding and instinct take over. They were bred to run down small game. Cats, little dogs, birds, etc., are not safe around them.

It's the same instinct that causes greyhounds and whippets to chase the little whatever you call it at the dog tracks. It's funny. They come when you call, but the best, most foolproof way to get them to come to you is to start running away from them—the pursuit reflex takes over and they come get you.

It can be a bit daunting. Hail Caesar, and he likes to come sprinting full blast. Here's this hundred pound hound flying about forty miles an hour heading straight at you. He'll twitch aside at the last minute, usually missing by about eight inches, sliding to a stop about fifteen yards later, making a skidding U-turn to finally leap back to your feet.

I weigh about two hundred, a little less nowadays. Once, steamin' in, he stumbled in a pothole, and before he could recover, hit me a glancing blow on the thigh. Sent me flying like I'd been hit by a wrecking ball. The bruise took weeks to heal.

I love watching them run. They remind me of the days when I was fleet, strong, and agile, too. :-)

So, I look out the window to see what's driving them nuts. It's usually a neighborhood cat, or a man walking a doglet, or something along those lines. But they're looking right at the front door of the office, not normally a direction from which springs the objects of their desires.

Curious, I walk out the front door to see what's causing the commotion, and there in the yard is this big, fat, black and grey rabbit calmly munching on some grass. He has to be some sort of mutt of a domesticated breed gone feral, because I don't think that regular cottontails come in that size and color.

I knew he'd been around for awhile, 'cause I'd seen his little bunny poo around the yard, but was surprised to see him in daylight, and his calm demeanor. He clearly knew that he was safe.

When the dogs saw me, the renewed their frenzied barking. They were desperately trying to communicate with me, jumping around, ramping, and giving me these lusty looks like, “Boss, don't you see it? Look, look, over there, a rabbit! Dude, let me off this chain, I'll be good for, like, ever. Let me go get some bunny, puhleeez? With sugar on it? Bambie Eyes Please?”

So here I am in this quandry. I love my dogs, they're good kids. They're never anything but eager to please, hampered in their ability to please me, to obey, only by their meager intellects, and my inability to effectively communicate my wishes to them.

They'll have fun chasing the rabbit. But the fact of the matter is, they're probably not going to catch him, as there are thickly wooded brushy lots on either side of the yard, just about fifteen yards away, so he'll probably get away. The hounds get a workout, and the rabbit gets another story to tell his buddies about his tough day at work. Everybody gets an adrenaline rush, nobody gets hurt. Good clean fun for all.

If not, it's probably better for the rabbit species as a whole, as this guy would have to be swimmin' in the slow end of the bunny gene pool to get caught.

My dog food bill for the week would be a little lighter, to boot. But, when said rabbit takes off into the woods, that dumb bitch Cleo (faster than Caesar, but a true blonde in every sense of the word) is most likely going to lose sight of him and run straight into one end of the woods, straight out the other without missing a step, and on into the subdivisions and cattle pastures behind them, bouncing from wabbit to cat to bird to itty bitty doglet chasing as animal targets of opportunity arise for about three freakin' miles before she runs outta gas, and my fat ass is gonna be one gigantic panting sweatball three steps from ambulance's door before she's done terrorizing every animal in north Harris County that falls below the fifteen pound Sight Hound Fair Game Limit.

Don't laugh. It's happened before. More than once.

This vision tilts the decision. Advantage: rabbit.

Just so I can get some peace, I need to run the rabbit off. I pick up a rock and hum it with my best thirty-five mph fastball form at the rabbit to move him along. The rock flies in approximately the correct compass direction, and lands close enough to the rabbit that he gets a dim awareness that there might be a small scent of danger in the air, and idly floops off to the nearby briar patch. The dogs falls silent, disappointed, casting mournful eyes in my direction.

I decided to call the rabbit Floopy.

Well, Floopy's been coming around regularly now, as the little part of the yard over the septic field is lush with tender spring grass, little red, blue and purple flowers, dandelions, and all other manner of lapine delicacies. I imagine it won't be long before he gets the word out on BunnyNet, and we'll be SRO on the septic field. That's cool by me, as it means I don't have to mow the daddy-banger twice a week.

Here's my problem: Floopy and his friends are driving my poor dogs mad, so I'm feeling bad. I imagine the bloodlust they're feeling from this constant temptation is about how I'd feel if Marilyn Monroe, Marina Baker, and Cookoff Girl were all giving each other a tongue bath about three feet away, with me behind a Lexan barrier in a straitjacket wearing boxing gloves.

From the looks they're giving me, they clearly think I'm nuts. Here's this big floopy rabbit to chase. It's what they're all about, the chase, the snap, the crunch of little bunny bones between their incisors, the taste of hot bunny blood rolling onto their tongues. It's what they were bred for, their Official Purpose in Life.

They didn't grow up, aimless, angst-ridden, wondering about the Meaning of Life, or what career they'd choose When They Grew Up, (Should I bartend, join the Peace Corps, sell out and go to work for M$, take a non-job, what?) They know. They're Small Game Hunters.

Bring on the prey, baby, and watch us work.

What could be simpler? Am I, their lord and master, stupid? How have they offended me? Am I mad at them? Why won't I let them chase the rabbit?

I wish I could open up their little doggie skulls, or do some sort of Vulcan mind meld and pour the understanding into their heads, so they would understand about heart attacks, leash laws, pissed off neighbors and their lawsuits caused by little Petunia the Pussy's or Peter the Poodle's bones crunching between their incisors, or any of my other human reasons.

But I don't think I can do that. They are limited by their inability to comprehend the thought processes of a consciousness more vast than theirs.

The canine middleware doesn't support the primate OS. Out of memory. Buffer overflow. Divide by zero. Crash.

It's like trying to teach a cow calculus.

Now I could, I guess, get a big stick or a whip or something along those lines, and beat the dogmeat out of them every time they bark at a rabbit, or chase a kitty, but I'm not the Old Testament kind of lord and master that likes to inflict suffering on his animals to bend them to his will. I can't bring myself to be that mean. They can't help what they are.

OK, reasoning won't work, and I won't use force. What's left?

Unreason.

I am going to start reading the Bible to them. I am going to instruct them in the errors of their ways. I'm going to tell them that the problem is that they are pagan dogs.

They are not saved, have never heard the Good News, and asked to be saved by the grace of dog from their sinful natures.

I'm going to tell them about original sin, how it's their own dogdam fault that they want to chase rabbits, and not the fault of the men that bred those natures into them.

I'll translate the Bible into canine terms for them, of course. For example, I'll tell them the story of how the sin of Bunny-Crunching came into the world.

Waaaay back when there was the First Dog, Bill. Bill, made in the image of Dog, was told by Dog that he could do anything he wanted to, roll in the grass, sleep on the sofa, boink the the First Bitch, Hilary, whenever she came into heat, do anything at all he wanted, except that he couldn't, under any circumstances, poo on the carpet.

But the Evile PussyKat talked Hilary into getting Bill to poo on the carpet. PussyKat told Hilary that dog pooed on the carpet, and so convinced Hilary that to poo on the carpet was the Thing To Do.

So, Bill got led astray by Hilary and her Kitty, and pooed on the carpet. Dog got angry with them, tossed them out of his house, and into the doghouse. Not before they managed to lift a bunch of furniture and art to take with them from the House of Dog to the doghouse, but that's another story.

It's really gonna damage their self-esteem to find out that they are so messed up, but that can't be helped. In sales, it's called Creating The Need.

After they wrap their dogbrains around around Original Sin, Shame, and Inherited Guilt, we'll start on Salvation. The Solution to The Need.

I'll tell them how, in order to save them from their natures, Dog bought into the world the Perfect Dog, the Dog that even though he was as fully a dog as the rest of the dogs, he was free of the urges to chase the kitty, bite rabbits, boink bitches, and poo on the carpet.

This Perfect Dog, RTT (Rin-Tin-Tin), would also be 100% Human, in addition to being 100% dog. In fact, RTT would be the the son of Human, by way of a Virgin Bitch who would get to be with child without benefit of Dog actually having to put his Dogly Dong in her, because, well, because Boinking is now a Bad Thing since Bill pooed on the carpet and got thrown into the doghouse, because Boinking leads sooner or later, to puppies, and every one of them is a vile little damned sinner of a puppy because of Original Sin, so each of those helpless innocent kissable puppies, so cute you just want to eat them up, nibble on their little puppy ears and paws, blow bubbles on their bellies, increases the amount of Evile in the world, and is just one more soul to has to be saved.

So if you boink that means you are on the PussyKat's team of Darkness and not on the side of Dog and the Light.

Besides, you can get thrown in jail in most jurisdictions for interspecies sex.

Finally, this DogMan, though free from sin, would be put to cruelly put to death by Animal Control so all dogs can be forgiven from the sins caused by the desires the breeders bred into them, so all they have to do is ask for forgiveness in the Holy Name of Rin-Tin-Tin.

And because RTT is both Dog and Man, he will be able to explain about heart attacks and lease laws and lawsuits in a manner that they will be able to understand.

Then I'll show them all sorts of pictures of RTT being cruelly beat to death, set up little statues of him to remind them of his sacrifice, and lead them in daily prayers of thanks and contemplation of the Holy Mysteries, not the least of which is who would ever think beating and killing the Perfect Dog, the Dog that never did anything wrong, the pure Dog, the ScapeDog, for the other dog's sins, makes any sense at all.

Parts like that are where it helps to have a lot of Faith.

As I think about it, I don't think the New Testament method is gonna work unaided. It doesn't seem likely that I'm going to be able to translate all this into dogthink unaided.

It's gonna take a Miracle. So, I'm counting on Divine Intervention.

I'm going to pray that the Creator gives me the same miraculous ability he gave to the original authors of the Good News to explain His Nature in terms that make sense to their dogbrains.

It's not really that much more difficult task than explaining it to humans, in my opinion.

Observe the following chart:

The tiny little hairline crack between them and us is much smaller than the yawning chasm between us and the Creator.

So if we can understand His Nature, remake Her into our image, and divine Its wishes with respect to us, they should be able to also. So, with the Creator's help, I am optimistic.

If Paul could do it, so can I.

I mean, look at all the advantages. I like dogs to start with. It's not like I work for Animal Control capturing bad dogs and putting them to sleep, and He's going to have to strike me down and fry my truck with a lightning bolt to get my attention and get me to realize my True Calling.

I will be the first Evangelist to the Canines, the Patron Saint of the Hounds, St. Marcus the Dog Whisperer, and, hopefully, someday rewarded for my efforts to make sure that All Dogs Go To Heaven by being welcomed into the bosom of the Creator and rewarded with Eternal Life.

I sense that some of you are skeptical. But why not?

Does not the Creator love all His creations? Does the Good Book not say (Matthew 10:29) that he is mindful of the fall of a single sparrow? Surely there is room enough in Heaven for every flavor of life, both the dim and the quick? Would a loving Creator discriminate against His slower children?

Mere human parents are able to love children afflicted with accidents of birth that prevent them from reaching the levels of intelligence, reason, and consciousness that most of our children do.

By all accounts, they love them as much as they do their more fortunate offspring. Can we accuse our Creator of lesser levels of empathy, love, and compassion? I cannot see how.

I know I am Right, and Righteous.

It cannot be otherwise, because I have Faith that it so, and Faith, the Good Book tells us (Hebrews 11:1) is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, the trump card that moves the mountains of doubt and rationality. No amount of evidence or argument can topple the rock, the fortress, of my Faith. My belief is the be-all and the end-all, and it bends reality to rest in its Procrustean Bed.

This is a big job, though, and is going to require a lot of effort, so I think it only fair that I get compensated for it.

So, after I get Caesar and Cleo saved, we'll all three work to get recruiting, errr, saving, more dogs. I think it'll be the highest and best use of my time to concentrate on the owners.

I'll get on TV to publicize the fact that Salvation in now available for your family pet, and set up services where the owners can bring Fido to meet C&C, and hear them preach. Getting C&C to preach will be no problem, I guaran-damn-tee.

Bring them out on a leash in front of several hundred poochies of various sizes and types for a good fire-and- brimstone Barkfest, and that sermon'll go on as long as you want it to. Better have two good men stout and true, and have them keep a deathgrip on that leash, though, or there'll be some fur flying amongst the faithful.

C&C can also transfer their hard-won knowledge of the nature of the Creator directly to the unwashed in dogthink, with the aid of laying on of paws, and maybe a butt-sniff or two.

Y'all won't know exactly what they're saying, of course, but we'll have Faith that the Holy Spirit will give them guidance, and provide real-time BabelFish style translation for the various canine tongues, the way He did for the original apostles when they spoke to polyglot crowds, so it won't matter if the potential converts are speaking Collie, or Beagle, or whatever.

Through my miraculous powers, I will furnish the translations of C&C's Spirit-filled orations for the human listeners.

I'm thinkin' regular old fashioned Tent Revival Services every Wednesday night, and regular services for the Faithful on Sunday.

After a suitable period of prayer, the pets and their owners could go to Sunday School to get indoctri... training, in the practical applications of Canine Ethics, (the morphing of their natural canine instincts to suit their lords and masters) such as not chasing cats, chewing up shoes, and general obedience, to include, of course, not pooing on the carpet.

Of course, we'll expect the standard tithes, as man cannot live on Salvation alone. We gotta eat, and cable time is expensive. Wouldn't most folks make a donation of, say, $25 bucks to ensure that the family pet can join the family in Eternal Bliss?

Then we can sweeten the deal with a Baptism ritual for the newly saved, complete with a dip for fleas while we're at it. Might as well be practical.

After we get the local store off the ground we go big into cable, maybe get our own 24/7 channel, and start saving souls wholesale instead of retail. We start crankin' in the spinoff revenue, the C&C T-shirts, Beanies, ballcaps, videos, maybe we can get the 77's to do an album—I got it, the lead single will be “Noah's Ark.” An “all dog's children get saved” spin oughta play in Peoria.

I'm seeing a video with C&C running around frolicking with Jesus in a sunlit meadow, catchin' Frisbees, whatever, soft autumn light, plenty of vaseline on the lens for that arty look, working title, “At Play In The Fields Of The Lord.” Fade in a sequence of RTT slowly materializing as he gallops across the field to join them.

Shouldn't be more than a year or so before we generate enough cash flow to go global, sending the missionaries out to start getting operations going so we can really start rakin' in the loot souls.

All For His Greater Glory.

This tale was first published, in slightly different form, in the Daveworld Journal, a few years ago, on Good Friday

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Merriam Webster's Dictionary

Reader Stephen responded to my post Grooved To Run. My response grew to the point where I decided to make it a separate post. His quoted words are in maroon. however there is only one country i can see that is gripped by blood lust and it isn't Iraq.

Sorry, but either you aren't looking very hard, or don't get the same news there in Oz that we do. Did you see the clips of the Palestinians dancing in the streets celebrating the WTC attack? Have you read the sermons of the mullahs to the people?

These are the words of a Muslim cleric broadcast on Iraqi TV September 13th...

"O God, deal with the Americans, the English, and the Jews, for they are within Your power. O God, show us a black day for them. O God, shake the land under their feet, lower their flags, sink their ships, and shoot down their planes. O God, terrorize them in their homes."

But, hey, we've been talking tough to them of late, so maybe that's understandable. How about a sermon from a service at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, broadcast on Saudi state television, September 6th...

"O God, help the mujahidin score victory and elevate the word of Islam. O God, give victory to the mujahidin in Palestine, Chechnya, Kashmir, and elsewhere. O God, support them. O God, destroy the usurper, tyrant Jews, who have spread corruption, killed people, destroyed property, and displaced people. O God, destroy them for they are within your power."

See any blood lust there, Stephen?

You do know that Saddam tried to asassinate Bush41 and the Emir of Kuwait in 1993, right? And about the '93 attack on the WTC, the '01 attack on the USS Cole, the embassy bombings in '98, the Beirut bombing in '83?

I'm also kinda wonderin' how much more of this you think we are supposed to endure before we can morally strike back. did you really mean all you said above ? it is disturbing when politicians push an agenda, you give the impression a large portion of the population feel the same way, this is worse.

I meant every single word of it, and then some. Nor do I think I'm alone, or even in the minority.

You see, I think the Islamofascists truly screwed the pooch here. We were content to let the Third World go hang itself. Immediately prior to the 9/11 attacks, the most common criticism of the world, from the Euros in particular, was that we weren't involved enough in what was going on. Nothing new there. The American people have historically been isolationist to a fault, to the point of allowing horrible things to happen in other parts of the world.

Case in point - WWII. The Japanese ran rampant through China and SE Asia, commiting atrocities galore. Ho-hum, who cares. Germany rolls over the Sudentenland, Poland, the Low Countries, France, and starts bombing Britain. Sorry fellas, here's some Lend-Lease trucks, no foriegn entanglements and all that. (Most American schoolkids don't even know that WWII started years before Pearl Harbor.) Then comes Dec. 7, 1941. Things changed after that.

Similarly, all throughout the past few decades, we've ignored what goes on in most countries internally. Sure, we leaned on South Africa to end apartheid, but that's because they were white, and of European extraction, and we (and the rest of the UN) set the bar higher for those societies than we do for the wogs. Idi Amin killed more black Africans than the government of South Africa ever did. Mugabe's doing it now. But, due to our racism, which lets us explain all this away as "that's just black boys being boys, they can't be expected to do no better" and the collective guilt some of us are still carrying around over our own extended struggle with the slavery and racism in our past, they get a free pass. But, I digress, as I am wont to do. We were talking about American isolationism, right?

No human rights in the Arab world, who cares? Unless the women and children getting killed have blue eyes and blonde hair, it doesn't count - not our fight, no national interest.

One baby falls down a well, and the nation goes nuts. In India, religious fanatics on both sides are torching each other in trains by the dozens. (shrug) Stupid wogs, what do you expect?

Africa is a fucking charnel house, with the population actually declining due to drought, AIDS, and internecine warfare. Peace is coming soon there, though it will be the peace of the grave. Doesn't even rate a prime-time blurb on the evening news.

Saddam gasses the Kurds, well, that's just what barbarians do, you know. Khmer Rouge, what's that, some new brand of makeup? Idi Amin? Whozzat? Hey, Joe Bagadonutz, find Rwanda on a map for me. Uh, gimme a hint, what continent? He couldn't find it with both hands if it was tatooed on his ass.

I'll give you fifty bucks for every US citizen that can correctly point out Tajikistan, Nigeria, and Qatar on an unlabeled map, if you give me a buck for every one that can't, and let you go double or nothing if they can state why each of those countries are important in the war on terror. The odds go up to 100-1 if the sample comes from a group of people that call themselves "peace activists."

Sure, the UN dragged us kicking and screaming into places like Somalia and the Balkans, where most Americans didn't really give a shit who was killing who, because we're the only country with a military that is capable of enforcing UN resolutions, and the Euros have long grown accustomed to using us as their proxy forces - leaves them more money for their socialist welfare states. Ah, the US Army, mercs for the planet, 'cept we don't get paid.

Meanwhile, over here in God's Country, history has been declared oficially dead. We're fat and goddam happy with our 547 channels of satellite TV, 401Ks, AOL chatrooms, and domestic politics. Gee, how we gonna spend that moolah we used to spend on the Cold War? Osama who? We're fiddling with the remote control while the world burns. Sure, a few whackos like me simmer and stew and rant, but hey, I'm a history nut and a Marine that lost a few pals in Beirut, and I know that "world peace" is just a theoretical state whose existence we are able to imagine from the fact that there are sometimes pauses in between wars, mostly so the combatants can reload, and that the world is riven by a level of mortal racial and religious hatreds that a) make a Georgia redneck honky and a black separatist look like bumpin' buddies, b) have existed for centuries, and c) are not gonna go away anytime soon. This, by the way, makes me a "warmonger" in the eyes of some of my friends.

Then comes the American Epiphany. 9/11. The Pearl Harbor of the New Millenium. The Mother of All Wake-Up Calls.

Guess what, Joe? What goes on in the rest of the world does matter. Those oceans we used as a moat with the Navy patrolling it like hungry crocs to keep the Bad Guys away doesn't work anymore in a world with cheap air travel and suitcase nukes, especially in a country of open borders, generous immigration polices, personal liberties, and a relaxed level of police surveillance.

Seems the social discontent of the economic backwaters of the world does spill over onto us, after all. No man is an island - each is a piece of the whole, a part of the main. Seems the bells tolling in Afghanistan, and Iraq and Iran and the West Bank and Zimbabwe and East Timor and every other sinkhole ruled by dirtbag dictators, kleptocracies, and mad mullahs were tolling for us, too, but we just didn't wanna hear it, and hit the mute button so we could hear the ballgame.

So, now, the radical Arab world has our attention. Congratulations, guys. Be careful what you pray for, you just might get it.

We know a lot more about the Arab world now. Now we're reading the Koran, and hearing on the news about the Saudi TheoPolice running girls back to die in burning buildings because they didn't meet the dress codes to get rescued. Now we know that they're teaching children in the madrassas that Jews are apes and pigs. Now we know what Shar'ia is, and how it demands that a Nigerian woman be buried to the neck and stoned for having unmarried sex.

It's pissing a lot of people like me off, and makes us wonder if it's the right thing to do to pretend the concept of human rights is not a universal, and goes away once you leave the States. It makes us wonder if people that can sincerely believe in that twisted fucking backward religion, which they clearly do, as they're willing to kill themselves for it, a religion every bit as nasty as the Xian one was before it grew up and out of the doctrine of conversion by the sword, would have one tiny qualm about loosing the nastiest stuff they can get their hands on in our infidel direction.

The conclusion that seems to predominate now in the American public is that they wouldn't.

I think the terrorists and their defenders are right, too. We do need to address the root causes of terrorism, and drain the swamp where it breeds. Problem for their Grand Design is it doesn't mean giving more money to corrupt tyrants like Arafat and Mugabe to squirrel away in their Paris bank accounts while their people starve, or letting them shove Israel into the sea. It damn sure doesn't mean converting to their fanatical flavor of Islam. It means to overthrow the regimes that promote and support that flavor, Wahabbism, and toss it and them into the trashpile of history, where it can rot along with the corpses of communism, nazism, and all the religious theocracies the rest of the world has outgrown.

If the only way to keep us safe from things like a bioweapon attack in LA, or more jets flying into our buildings is to export US-styled liberal democracy at the point of M1 main gun muzzle to every stinking swamp of a Third World ratbag nation on the planet, then that's what's going to happen. It was always the right thing to do, but Osama and his buds made it a matter of selfish national interest, too.

You see, much, I think, to our discredit, we've never, as a nation, really been moral enough to want to go fight for other peoples' human rights. We got our belly full of that in the Civil War, thank you very much. It's always had to be our ox getting gored before the American people would cry havoc and unleash the wardogs. Sure, we fought in Korea and Viet Nam, but only in the teeth of considerable domestic opposition, and only by the politicos at the time hardselling these conflicts as a matter of our national security, however correct history will decide they proved to be.

We have preferred to simply build strong defenses, contain our sworn enemies, and let the virii of our economic strength, technology, and popular culture eventually bring the sick regimes down. It worked pretty well on the Warsaw Pact, and it's eating away the Arab world like a runaway cancer. Conquest via the Almighty Dollar, with generals Coke and Intel and Nike and Hollywood leading the divisions of microchips and music videos. That's why the radical Muslims and the other repressive regimes have to ban western-style culture. Once you've seen Britney's bellybutton, it's kinda hard to go back to liking the tent women, and it's even harder to keep the women in the tents, too. Keep the PC's out of the Cuban people's hands, they might find out how the other half really lives on the other side of the walls that keep them in Fidel's Worker's Paradise.

I've said it before, as have many others - they don't hate us for anything we've done, they hate us for what we are. A free people, with free women, free to fuck and drink and vote and speak and pray as we see fit, or not, and not the way a mullah tells us to. Sure, they'll use Israel as an excuse, and there will always be a few fools that will believe them, but the truth is our cultures are as inimical to one another as matter and anti-matter - they cannot coexist peacefully. It's either them, or us, and I unabashedly choose us. military action doesn't mean your strong or brave,

Never said it did. it shows your arrogant and vengeful.

Arrogant? How does that follow? Confident, perhaps, and rightly so. Vengeful? You better goddam believe it. The sooner the rest of the planet finds out that the consequences of killing US civilians in a terrorist attack is having your head handed to you, then the less of us, and consequently, the less of them will die, and that's an altogether Good Thang. It'd be nice if they learn to love us and our freedoms, but I'll settle for fear. you can't win.

I'm in a quandry here, as whether the best response to that statement is, "You wanna bet?", "Hide and watch?", or to just laugh. You are kiddin', right? We could prolly take down Saddam with just the Marine Corps and a few carriers if we really had to, though that's certainly not the way to do it. But maybe that's just me being arrogant. if it is possible you will be creating more hate, more orphans to become the next generation of terrorists

Oh, c'mon. That tired old cycle of violence argument? That must explain the generation-spanning waves of Russian, German, Japanese terrorist attacks we've been plagued with lately. There's so many of them we barely notice the Confederate, Mexican, and Native American suicide bombers anymore.

One final point. I certainly believe in the concept of six degrees of separation. I hope that by putting this out on the web, it'll get to somebody that'll get it to somebody, etc., until it wends it's way to some of the Head Poobahs in the Arab world. This is a prediction.

At some point in the coming conflict over there, probably about the time the shooting starts, somebody's going to ponder the advisability and efficacy of using a few of your human bombers over here, and trying to turn some American civilians into nail-studded pieces of bloody mush. Before you decide to do so, consider this - what do you think Israel would be doing to you right now if it was the most powerful country on earth, and there was nobody keeping the lid on their responses?

I know my people. The gloves will come off. About the second or third time this happens, every single shred of pacifist sentiment, fair play, or even prudent restraint in the conduct of the war, is going to blow away as if they never were. The clamor, the political pressure, we will put on our leaders to stop these attacks, will rise to the point that they're going to quit worrying about who's ultimately responsible, civilian casualties, collateral damage, world opinion, or anything else, and start killing people the bombings stop. Look in the index of your history books under terms like Dresden, Tokyo, and firestorm. You don't want to push us that hard. Our present taste for precision warfare may prove to be a passing fad.

Sure, we know that you don't really care for your people the way we do. But we know exactly what you do hold most dear. If you wish to continue to be able to make the pilgrimage to, or worship in, Mecca, without having to wear a lead-lined thobe, you might wanna hold off on giving those those bombers the green light.

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You'd think after about 36 hours, I'd be getting better. The swelling seems to be slowly travelling up my arm.When I first wrote about it, maybe half of my forearm was swollen. By Saturday morning it was to my elbow. Now it's up to my deltoid - my bicep and tricep look like Popeye's, and my whole arm is hot to the touch. What is up with this?

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