Chlorophyll

At this point, I expect the neo-con administration to attack Iraq some time soon, abandoning the whatever fleeting vestiges may have remained of the consent of the governed. This government is more foreign to me than the people of the several other nations I've visited over the last year or two. Those folks had intriguing but ultimately inviting differences. This administration is so alien and incomprehensible to me that I just assume the worst about them... and they continue to do worse still. We'll be digging up dirt on them for the rest of our lives.

Still, there's a glimmer of hope in the fact that W disapproval rating is closing in on twice his approval rating, an accomplisment few Presidents have achieved. Nixon was one. The Times UK reports that a full 47% "strongly disapprove." That's the good news. The bad news is, W doesn't give a damn.

And the Democrats have managed to pull ahead of the Republicans on "the Iraq issue." Is it for their principled and unwavering stance on "the issue?" Not hardly. We've come to where waffling and avoinding the issue looks good against a backdrop of indifference towards the spilling of unnecesary and/or innocent blood. These are the choices the major parties offer the public: the uncertain and the unconcerned.

Back to Iran. Now, everything I read says that this guy they have in charge is not typical of the people. How he came to power I don't know - probably Diebold sells voting machines there, too. Anyway, the Iranian people are considered to be moderate, rational, educated, even pro-Western. That means this not a clash of cultures. This is a staring contest between W and whatever the heck his name is. Now, drop a bomb or two on the people, nuclear or otherwise, and watch that all change on a dime. Watch us - by which I mean not us but W and his puppeteers - take a delicate situation and turn it into a full-blown catastrophe. Watch them turn mild-mannered nominal Muslims and convert them to foaming Islamists. It doesn't take a lot - a dead child here or there is enough. And there will be many dead children. Please don't try to reconcile this with the Republican pro-life stance - that's a waste of time.

None of this means I want Iran to have The Bomb. Not in the least. I don't want anyone to have The Bomb. Not Iran, not Israel, not France, not the UK, and not the USA. No one. Period. But, frankly, the best and latest news I've heard says that Iran is, at the absolute minimum, four years away from being able to create a nuke, and that's assuming they work feverishly, setting aside all peaceful uses for nuclear power (which is a hotly debatable topic, but not the one at hand).

If W pushes ahead with this lunacy, his 38 points of support will crumble, possibly into the single digits. That's when I will really become afraid. He and his supposed underlings will need to control dissent, but what does one do when the dissenters are two thirds of the population?