Rich:

I proposed no course of action; simply a different set of ideas about who we are vis-a-vis the ordinary citizens of Iraq (or anywhere else). Ideas like this, which contain more truth than is offered by a totalitarian regime, can become very dangerous weapons in their own right. Witness the role of samizdat in the eventual collapse of the U.S.S.R.

In fact, such ideas may be the only weapons available to the ordinary man and woman in Iraq. I certainly do not believe that they freely choose to live under a blindly dictatorial system, do you?

A