I want to modify my previous posted paragraph about atrocities. Having just read the New York Times article reviewing books coming out on the prison scandal, it is established that the problem on the part of US treatment of prisoners was and is endemic and serious. If it happened to me personally it would indeed be something I would remember as an atrocity, and the remark about 'walk the dog' in retrospect was callous on my part. The reason not to engage in torture is not so much that is generally ineffective, which it is, but what it does to us.

I hold to my comments on Saddam and disagree with Dianavan's use of my comment to characterize the US President. I want to repeat something I've said elsewhere and elsewhen: Bush is the leader we've got. The Islamic fascist terror problem is real. Rather than tear down the leader you've got, you work with him and his crew, but fight the errors of their ways as best you can.

I would respectfully ask dianavan to be specific in what more they could have done. I can say what more the UN could have done. It is much much easier to demonstrate what the UN has not done: In Rwanda, in Darfur, in Iraq.

However, I also believe that while we should make an effort to work with the President and PM we've got, we should also work with the UN we've got. While I believe the UN is rife with corruption and some of the worst cut-throats in the world, cutting off the UN on our part would be bad in the long term.

It's a nasty old world, and Bush, for better or worse, is approaching it like a marshall going into Dodge City. And that's not all wrong.