I concur with Kim; I think the whole discussion at the top level of the DoD about invasion and war against a second-rate nation is entirely an effort to sound convincingly threatening. The problem with a bluff like that is that it can conceivably be called; but Saddam tried that before with Daddio, mouthing off about the mother of all battles, remember? It turned out not to be the mother of much, after all that toxic rhetoric.

If the man is as psycho as he seems to be the last thing that will work is backing down a la "Peace in Our Time" Neville Chamberlain, trying to make Adolf calm down. It pays to remember what has worked and what has not in the past.

That said, I can only hope that the current war-mongering noises coming out of Cheney et al are actually rhetorical devices. The purpose of war, Klausewitz advises, is to bring about a more amenable frame of mind on the part of the enemy, and rhetoric surely serves that end. If it tips over the brink into physical engegement on a large scale, we run a serious risk of moral bankruptcy, fiscal drainage and a serious setback to more worthy goals in the world.

A