Fascinating points made here. Like some of you, I guess I was thinking of the fact that Ahab took everyone except Ishmael to their deaths. His maniacal quest did them all in. Hamlet dragged everyone off this motal coil as well. Hamlet and Bush are both, in the end, doing their father's bidding----. Hamlet's father was murdered. George W's father was turned out (killed metaphorically) by the voters after letting Sadam off the hook.------- Since I just watched a DVD of Richard Burton's take on Hamlet, I think it was just on my mind. I'd jalso re-wound MOBY DICK on a VHS video after looking for the spots where A. L. "Bert" Lloyd sang the anchor up. But you folks have extended my unthought out ideas here admirably. -------- Still, I see no practical use to this exercise other than to help us see our own points of view on this issue in which I feel so fucking powerless. How to change the inertia of our seeming headlong plunge into the fires of Mount Doom---"that is the question". The answer has to be, for all of us, "to be" !!!

Art Thieme