Only speculation, of course. And certainly a matter of the individual responses of individual Brits or Yanks—or anyone. I can understand a certain grim satisfaction in seeing evidence of a genuine villain getting his just comeuppance. I experience it myself, and indeed cheer with the rest of the audience when the hero de cinema finally splatters the villain all over the landscape. But I do feel that, in real life, cheers and rejoicing at the sight of someone's mutilated corpse or at a display of a living villain undergoing indignities is a bit unrefined in the civilization department.

We gnash our teeth and mutter "Geneva accords" when an enemy displays our troops on television (just sitting there, actually), and then we turn around and giggle with glee when, all day long for days in a row, the various news channels show us a disheveled Saddam being checked for head lice. Did they have to show the head lice and tongue depressor sort of thing? All day long? For several days in a row? Still?

Lemme see, now—how do you spell "hypocrisy" again. . . ?

Don Firth