Any time anybody says anything about the country I'm living in which is based on accurate information - which can be gathered in various ways - I can't see a problem with that.

Otherwise you end up with the ridiculous situation where you can't say anything disparaging about Saddam or Dubya because you don't live there.

(For example I'm all in favour of people from all over the world writing to the British Government, telling them that the new Licensing Law that threatens to penalise us for making music where there isn't a licence, is ridiculous and oppressive.)

Going off half cocked about something we don't know about, and recycling prejudices, that is something different.

And Wolfgang - I think there's a difference between speculative figures about what might happen, and reported figures about what has happened. By definition the first don't even set out to be accurate - and I'd think "tens or hundreds of thousands" indicates that pretty clearly. It's important to try to be as accurate as possible on actual figures. Not that easy - if someone doesn't get penicillin and they die, deciding for sure that they wouldn't have died anyway is not straightforward often enough, I'd imagine.

If the war goes ahead and the number of people killed is lower than tens of thousands I'd be grateful for a big small mercy. Going by the number of deaths last time it doesn't seem that likely, but who can tell?