KimC, from your facile remark about American generosity to the world, I guess you are aware of onoly half the story.

Yes, the US, with its six per cent of the world population chews up 30 to 50 per cent of the world's finite resources (according to whose figures you take) and accounts for nearly half of all global pollution. But what does it give back, or even invest in the development of the world's poorest nations? Virtually nothing.

Even the US government accepts that eradication of poverty and malnutration, worldwide, would take less than one per cent of the global economy. That's why the UN set a target for OECD countries to invest 0.7 per cent of their GNPs in international development aid. Some countries (eg Sweden, Norway, Japan) exceed this. The UK is managing a miserable 0.38 per cent at present. Where is the US? Bottom of the list, of course, with a shaming 0.09 per cent.

Even if you go by actual dollars, the US comes behind Japan, Germany and one or two others, notwithstanding that it is the world's richest country by miles.

As for that drivel posted by Stewart, I was particularly amused to read: you don't have a clue why we (America) are so strong.... Strong? In some parts of the world it looks like America has been turned into a headless chicken by a few nutters with penknives and white sand. When it comes to the crunch, America is no stronger than anywhere else, because it is just as vulnerable as the rest of us to criminal protest.

As for you, Big Mick, I'm surprised! I suppose the present campaign is indeed surgical, to the extent that unlike in the Balkan fiasco they have so far managed to avoid bombing the wrong country. God knows what they are hitting though, apart from Red Cross dumps and UN mine-clearing personnel. (Difficult to cover up blunders on that scale I suppose.)

During those early weeks of commendable restraint, it really looked like there was a chance for real progress. But hope went out of the window once the missiles started flying. American networks will soon be full of images of homeless families starving through this coming winter in their thousands. And in months to come, the heroes flying the gunships etc will come home to find they are not heroes at all, but the living embodiment of their nation's guilty conscience. But this time they will have no excuse, because they had the chance to learn from the experiences of you, Mick, and your comrades in arms in an earlier campaign, as you once recounted so movingly in another thread.