Steve---I can't think where you have been for the last six months! Where you get the idea that this attack on Iraq was with the blessing of the UN, I don't know. There MIGHT have come a time when direct action would have been required by that world body, but the American administration never had any intention of refraining from the action which is now in process. The bunch [and that is as respectful as I intend to be] at the top in the USA at present are , to a man, "UN haters". Reading some of the comments here, I come to the sad conclusion that a good number of the American people are likewise minded.If there are still some Americans who are naive enough to believe that operation "Iraqi Freedom"is an apt name for what is going on in the middle east, then I can only assume that they are being starved of the facts of what is happening on the ground. That "the best-laid plans" have yet again "gone agley" is as plain as day, no matter how the propaganda machines in London and New York try to insist that they knew all along that the Iraqis would fight. Heads more important than those of journalists have been rolling because their owners have been broadcasting uncomfortable truths. I'm one, by the way, who is deploring the Iraqi will to fight. While it shows their independent spirit, and their love of their Nation despite their despotic leader, it also spells death and misery for many innocent Iraqi women, little children and men, and so too for the young men in uniform who have been sent to fight the fight for oilmen and profiteers. This "war" is as nothing to what must lie now in the future.