Bush's remark was typically inept and obtuse; but if he was making the point T says he was making, it is a fair point -- that the spirit of independence had been heavily suppressed in Iraq under Saddam Hussein, and the culture was not likely to be generating heroic leaders.

It takes an elephantiastic sort of brazen effrontery to assert that he was right because the program was discontinued 4 years ago, because that proves it once existed, and therefgore the risk is just as vivid and scary as he said it was.

Nevertheless, I would really like to know what is going on in the collective mind of the Persian mullahs and technological leadership. I do not trust Bush or his company to speak the truth or even find it; but I do not much more trust Ahmadinjabad or whatever the correct spelling is. Oddly, though, I have never met an individual Iranian who was not thoughtful, polite, and hard-working.

I am mindful, looking over the devestation of Iraq, of where it was that the game of chess was first developed into its modern form. (It was arguably born in India or perhaps Afghanistan; but it is from Persia that it went forth into the Arabic and Western worlds.)

A