What's really frustrating about all this is what I was originally complaining about: the role of the media. None of us should have to be doing half-assed amateur analysis of this, but a moderately thorough search of news sites shows nothing except closely cropped photos of the scene. This series from the BBC is about the best I could find, and #8 in the series (shown at right) pretty clearly shows a group of no more than 100-200 Iraqis standing around the statue as it fell (you can see the edge of the crowd, so that's probably all there was).

A good point, but all I'm emphasizing is that the reasons the anti-war crowd were wrong to oppose the war before it began are simply being confirmed. The victory does matter in this regard: the extent of Saddam's atrocities will soon be known. What was never in doubt, however, was that his rule was atrocious, and what I abhor is the fact that the anti-war crowd buried its head in the sand.

Menashi's argument is that Dartmouth students need fraternities as counterweight, not the administration or even necessarily the institution as a whole. The dangers of unchecked power are to those without it. The proper analogy is that the rest of world needs intermediary institutions (i.e. the United Nations) as a counterweight to U.S. power. The U.S. on the other hand would best serve it's interests by eliminating those counterweights. As it happens, I think this revised analogy is in most respects correct (the ways it's not will have to wait for another day). But right or wrong, nothing in it makes much of a case for U.S. citizens to support checks on U.S. power."

So here's a circumstance I've wondered about. Imagine that a close single female friend (just a friend) mentioned to you that she has a vibrator that's shaped like a highly stylized penis. It's not too anatomically correct, just a normal vibrator. Assume that this came up in a suitable context, for example when something -- a store you're driving by, a joke you hear on the radio, a blog post you've just read -- naturally raised the question, so it didn't just come out of the blue ("You say you're out of batteries? Speaking of batteries, I just LOVE my vibrator!"). What would you think? I suspect that in my general circle -- coastal, relatively socially liberal professionals -- most people wouldn't think much of it. We expect that many women use vibrators occasionally. We've heard about them often enough that they're hardly shocking. If anything, some men might find the idea a bit exciting, perhaps because they see it as a sign that the woman is at ease with her sexuality.
OK, now imagine that a close single male friend (just a friend) mentioned to you, under similar circumstances, that he has a vibrator that's shaped like a stylized vagina. What would you think then? My sense is that many people will think it's a bit icky, in some hard to pin down way. Not everyone would; some people won't care. But I think that a much higher fraction of people -- again, at least people in my social circle -- would be put off by the idea of a man using a vagina-shaped vibrator than a woman using a penis-shaped vibrator..... Is that so, and, if it is, then why? Why is this sort of sexuality seen as fine for women but not for men?

Where's the Outrage? IT WAS LESS THAN four months ago that Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott lost his job as majority leader, and deservedly so, after praising the segregationist presidential campaign of Strom Thurmond. Now another lawmaker, Republican Rep. Barbara Cubin of Wyoming, has out-Lotted Mr. Lott. Mrs. Cubin's remarks came not in a birthday tribute to a centenarian but on the floor of the House of Representatives, in the midst of a serious debate on a gun measure. No historical memory is needed to adequately appreciate their bald racism. And unlike in the case of Mr. Lott, Mrs. Cubin's remarks seem to have provoked barely a word of protest from her Republican colleagues. For fear that some may think they are taken out of context, we reprint the offending part here in its entirety: "My sons are 25 and 30. They are blond-haired and blue-eyed. One amendment today said we could not sell guns to anybody under drug treatment. So does that mean if you go into a black community, you cannot sell a gun to any black person, or does that mean because my -- "
At this point, Rep. Melvin Watt (D-N.C.) demanded that her words be stricken from the record as inappropriate. You might think that Mrs. Cubin then would have realized she had equated African Americans with drug addicts and apologized as profusely as possible. Instead, she told Mr. Watt, who is African American, that she wanted "to apologize to my colleague for his sensitivities." When Mr. Watt noted, correctly, that it was not a matter of whether his feelings were hurt but of "using words that are insulting to the entire African American race," Mrs. Cubin declined the opportunity to back down. "Mr. Chairman," she said, "I do not withdraw my words."
Mrs. Cubin said later that she was simply trying "to make the point that stereotyping is always wrong." If so, she chose an odd way to do so. The reference to her sons, she explained, was headed in the direction of asking if they should be kept from buying guns because they look like "the children at Columbine." But to argue analogously that the amendment would have kept dealers from selling guns in the black community is true only if you subscribe to a worldview in which "African American" equals "presumptive drug user." Yet more astonishing than Mrs. Cubin's obtuseness was that when the full House considered whether to have Mrs. Cubin's words "taken down" as offensive -- a move that would have stricken them from the record and kept her from speaking for the rest of the day -- it voted in her favor, 227 to 195. Not a single Republican lawmaker voted against the remarks. Afterward, not a word of criticism from House Republican leaders. Upon being asked for comment, House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) yesterday ventured (through a spokesman) to say that the remarks "clearly left the wrong impression." He also described Mrs. Cubin as a "sensitive and at heart a very good person." Maybe so; but shrugging off the offensiveness of her statement is no more appropriate now than when Republican leaders tried the same tactic immediately after Mr. Lott made his remark.

It's still hard to say exactly where Mrs. Cubin was going with her remark, but it looks to me like an inartful way to argue against stereotyping. She was arguing, I think (maybe?), that drug addiction is an arbitrary and irrational basis for denying someone a right in the same way that race is an arbitrary and irrational basis for denying someone a right.I think. Maybe.

The reference to her sons, she explained, was headed in the direction of asking if they should be kept from buying guns because they look like "the children at Columbine." But to argue analogously that the amendment would have kept dealers from selling guns in the black community is true only if you subscribe to a worldview in which "African American" equals "presumptive drug user."

A few brief words on the anti-war movement. While I'm not sure I'd necessarily call the movement a moral failing as Emmett has, I think they razed their own credibility with their silence. And for that, they should be ashamed. As Stefan pointed out in our latest issue, many on that side of the fence have come to see Saddam's regime of terror as the "Achille's Heel" of the anti-war movement; it just makes them look bad, and, as such, they haven't/couldn't come up with a way to deal with it.

Robert Nozick, a philosophy professor at Harvard, is the intellectual hero of libertarians. His book, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, winner of the National Book Award in 1974, argues that "free minds and free markets" are the key to a successful society. While endorsing personal choice on social issues like drugs and pornography, Nozick mocked the economic interventionism of contemporary liberals who, he said, are "willing to tolerate every kind of behavior except capitalistic acts between consenting adults." Alas, it now appears that like so many other advocates of the free market, Nozick is willing to make one small exception --himself.
In September 1983, Nozick signed a one-year lease on a condominium apartment in Cambridge, Massachusetts, owned by Eric Segal, the eminent classical scholar and author of _Love Story_. Segal, who bought the place in 1972, has lived there only occasionally and now resides in England. The apartment is a beauty, actually two combined units with 2,500 square feet of space, a wine "safe", Jacuzzi, sauna, and a 50-foot balcony overlooking the Charles River. As a consenting adult, Nozick agreed to pay Segal $1,900 a month.
...
Nozick knew he had not been the first tenant. Segal had rented out the apartment several times before to friends and acquaintances. After some investigating, Nozick turned up a couple in the building who house-sat the apartment for six months in 1976, without a lease, paying only $675 a month. In September 1985, Nozick's second lease expired. Even though he had no contractual right to stay in Segal's apartment, he did not want to move out. The interventionist state to the rescue once again! Under Cambridge's rent control ordinance, even a tenant without a lease is evictable only if the owner himself wanted to move into the apartment. Not only did Nozick stay put, but a month later he filed suit against Segal in Cambridge District Court. Nozick argued the rent --based on the $675 base figure-- should now be only about $800. He demanded a $25,000 refund for two years of "overpayment" --plus triple damages.

RN: Yes. But I never stopped self-applying. What I was really saying in The Examined Life was that I was no longer as hardcore a libertarian as I had been before. But the rumors of my deviation (or apostasy!) from libertarianism were much exaggerated. I think this book makes clear the extent to which I still am within the general framework of libertarianism, especially the ethics chapter and its section on the "Core Principle of Ethics." One thing that I think reinforced the view that I had rejected libertarianism was a story about an apartment of [Love Story author] Erich Segal's that I had been renting. Do you know about that?
JS: I did hear about that. The story that had gone around was that you had taken action against a landlord to secure a certain fixed rent…
RN: That's right. In the rent he was charging me, Erich Segal was violating a Cambridge rent control statute. I knew at the time that when I let my intense irritation with representatives of Erich Segal lead me to invoke against him rent control laws that I opposed and disapproved of, that I would later come to regret it, but sometimes you have to do what you have to do.

David Brooks: If you go to The New Republic website, you read this fantastic diary the Iraqi intellectual Makiya is writing. One of the things he talks about are the wounds that psychologically these people have suffered. They've suffered incredible deprivation ...
Tony Judt: I hate to agree with you David. This is going to undermine your reputation at the Weekly Standard and elsewhere. But I do agree. However ...
Charlie Rose: He's already done that by quoting The New Republic.
Tony Judt: That's true. [pause] Well, not so much these days.

Rep. Barbara Cubin, R-Wyo., was accused of being racially insensitive by Rep. Melvin Watt, D-N.C., during debate over whether to prohibit lawsuits from being brought against gun and ammunition manufacturers, dealers and importers for damage resulting from misuse of their products. Cubin, who supports the bill, was complaining about a failed Democratic amendment that would have banned gun sales to drug addicts or people undergoing drug treatment. "So does that mean that if you go into a black community, you can't sell any guns to any black person?" she asked.
Watt immediately interrupted Cubin, calling for her words to be stricken from the House record. Cubin apologized for offending Watt's "sensitivities," saying she was sorry if her words offended anyone, but she refused to have her words removed from the debate. More

Speaking to USA Today on March 24, Lieutenant Joshua Rushing, Central Command's liaison to the station, said, "I think [Al Jazeera is] as fair and balanced as a lot of our coverage in the United States. ... I think in terms of the higher principles of journalism, they are just like the 24-hour news stations in the U.S."

Several male students, one wielding a wooden plank, broke into the suite of an anti-war activist in Calhoun College March 27 and wrote a hateful note on her bedroom message board, said the victim, Katherine Lo '05. Lo said the incident occurred a day after she hung an American flag upside-down from her bedroom window to protest the war in Iraq. More

If [Saddam] were to meet all the conditions of the United Nations, the conditions that I've described very clearly in terms that everybody can understand, that in itself will signal the regime has changed ...

I begin my three stage argument by elaborating on Chief Justice Hughes' gesture toward the dark clouds surrounding the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment. As the Coleman court intimates, ten of the existing state governments of the South, along with three border states, solemnly rejected the Republicans' initiative during the months following its proposal in June, 1866. n97 If the Reconstruction Congress had accepted these rejections, it would have been obliged by the rules of Article Five to conclude that its proposed Amendment was dead. Thirteen rejections is a lot more than the nine then required to invoke the veto formally accorded one-quarter of the states by the rules of Article Five. n98 The Reconstruction Republicans in control of Congress, however, refused to accept this outcome. Instead, they passed a series of Reconstruction Acts that sought [*501] nothing less than to destroy the dissenting governments of the South and to reconstruct them on a basis that would make ratification of the Amendment more likely -- instructing the Union Army to register freed blacks as well as whites in the reconstructed state electorates (note that this was before the Fifteenth Amendment). n99

The obvious question this raises is whether congressional reconstruction could be justified under the clause making the United States a guarantor of the republican form of government in all the states. n100 Even if this difficult problem is solved satisfactorily, it only prepares the way for a truly unresolvable dilemma. The impossible question arises when we see how the Reconstruction Act treated the new black-and-white Southern governments even after they had organized themselves in complete compliance with Congress' demands. Section Five of the first Reconstruction Act denied these new democratically elected states the authority to send senators and representatives to Congress on an equal footing with the other states until they ratified the Fourteenth Amendment! n101 Now there is simply no way that this demand can be reconciled with the rules of Article Five. If these rules mean anything, they deny Congress the authority to bootstrap its amendments to validity by destroying dissenting governments and then denying congressional representation to the new ones until they accept the constitutional initiatives that the preceding governments found unacceptable. Can [*502] it be thought surprising that Secretary Seward's first Proclamation concerning the Fourteenth Amendment expressed doubts about the Amendment's validity when state consent had been procured under ground rules at such variance with those specified by Article Five? n102

As if this were not enough, the formalist should be on notice that the Republican decision to play fast and loose with the rules of Article Five did not begin in 1868. Instead, the chain of "historic precedents" that mark the break with the Federalist rules begins with the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. n103 For present purposes, I restrict myself to a single additional problem, which I will call the Thirteenth-Fourteenth Amendment Paradox. The problem can be introduced with a single fact: The very governments Congress destroyed in response to their veto of the Fourteenth Amendment played a critical role in the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment. n104 How, then, could it be that these governments were legitimate enough to validate the Thirteenth but not legitimate when they refused to validate the Fourteenth?

The Paradox deepens when we introduce another fact about the months between February and December 1865 -- the period during which the states were considering whether they would ratify the Thirteenth Amendment. As the first set of post-War governments in the South were considering ratification, they were also selecting Senators and running elections for Representatives to the House. By early December, then, the Southerners were sending two legal signals to Washington: The first consisted of ratifications of the Thirteenth Amendment; the second, senators and representatives to the Thirty-ninth Congress, scheduled to convene on December 4, 1865.

These two communications were treated very differently when they were received in Washington. On December 18, Secretary Seward proclaimed the Thirteenth Amendment valid, explicitly citing the Southern ratifications in his official Proclamation. n105 Two weeks earlier, the Republicans in Congress refused to seat any of the Southern representatives, [*503] and continued to deny the Southern states representation throughout the entire period during which the Fourteenth Amendment was proposed and "ratified." n106 Southern exclusion, moreover, was a necessary political condition for the Republicans to gain the two-thirds vote required by Article Five for the proposal of a constitutional amendment. n107 How, then, can the formalist explain the legitimacy of the proposal of the Fourteenth Amendment by the Rump Republican "Congress" without simultaneously delegitimizing Secretary Seward's Proclamation validating the Thirteenth Amendment?

Let's begin with some numbers. In 1865 there were thirty-six states; eleven were in the Confederacy and by Appomattox, twenty-five states supported the national cause. There were two theories on which an amendment could be ratified. First it could secure either twenty-seven (3/4 of 36) states. Alternatively, it might need only nineteen Union ratifications (3/4 of the 25) on the assumption that the Southern states were out until brought back in. Lincoln believed that excluding the Confederate states from the ratification process ""would be questionable and sure to be persistently questioned'" (p. 148) and in the brief period in which exclusion was viable, even the radical Henry Wilson, who thought it legitimate, eschewed reliance upon the nineteen Northern ratifications.

The Confederacy presented a constitutional dilemma. Once Andrew Johnson started with his vetoes, if the South were admitted to Congress, its representatives could join with Northern Democrats to block any legislation implementing the Thirteenth Amendment and, indeed, any further constitutional change. Yet if the South were excluded as states, no constitutional amendments beyond the Thirteenth could hope to achieve nineteen Northern ratifications. n7

On December 18, 1865, Secretary of State William Seward proclaimed the Thirteenth Amendment had been ratified by the requisite twenty-seven states (including the constitutionally intriguing West Virginia as well as eight from the Confederacy). Yet, two weeks earlier, Republican majorities in the Thirty-Ninth Congress had refused to seat Southern Representatives and Senators. The exclusion included Horace Maynard from eastern Tennessee, even though he had been seated during the Civil War!

[*551] Problem One, therefore, is how a state can ratify an amendment but be denied representation in the national government. Problem One, however, is easy compared to Problem Two. With the South excluded, as it would be throughout the Thirty-Ninth Congress, the Congress by 2/3 votes of its Northern members in both Houses proposed the Fourteenth Amendment. The new amendment could not receive the needed nineteen Northern ratifications. Therefore, to reach the three-fourths mark, some, perhaps all, states of the Confederacy were essential. With the exception of Tennessee (which ratified quickly and was rewarded with its Congressional seats), the Confederate states rejected the Fourteenth Amendment. Congress responded, after an extensive debate, by adopting a policy of military reconstruction. It wiped out the existing Southern governments that had ratified the Thirteenth Amendment and replaced them with new governments, which were informed that they could not have Congressional representation until the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified. Like Andrew Johnson facing conviction on the articles of impeachment, the South,too, switched.

Problem Two requires explanation of how a state can be stripped of Congressional representation unless and until it agrees to a proposed constitutional amendment. Not surprisingly, the text of Article V does not authorize excluding states from Congress unless they assent to proposed amendments. Conversely, Article V textually states "that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate." One need not be a dimwitted hypertextualist to understand that no representation for the South is not equal representation with the North.

....But no stalemate occurred because the 1866 elections were a spectacular Republican triumph. Republicans carried the House by 144-49, won every Northern legislature, and every contested gubernatorial race. By winning in the states that counted, the Republicans made them the states that were allowed to count. Meanwhile, Johnson clung to his former position and his hope for a different outcome in the 1868 elections....

The same numerical logic that had been operating to exclude the South was driving these events. If Johnson and the Democrats could successfully hold out, they could turn the 1868 elections into a battle over whether to adopt the Fourteenth Amendment (and whether to seat the South without the Fourteenth). In one sense, this was hardly an idle hope: Northern citizens would eventually tire of the constant political battles and some form of normalcy would reassert itself. The question was when. Because it might be 1868, the Republicans wanted the Fourteenth on the books before the elections. ...
Second, after the Senate heard one of the House managers, Ben Butler, argue that Johnson could be convicted not only for actual crimes but also if his actions were "subversive of some fundamental or essential principle of government or highly prejudicial to the public interest," Johnson switched. (p. 227) (emphasis in original) He assured moderate Republicans that he would do nothing to violate the laws or Constitution if acquitted, but more importantly, he ceased his obstruction of Congressional Reconstruction in the South...

Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) said "as president he would only appoint judges" to SCOTUS who support Roe v. Wade. He told Dem women in IA "he would break the tradition that judicial candidates shouldn't be disqualified" over a single issue. Asked at the Hotel Fort Des Moines "if he would appoint judges who would uphold" Roe v. Wade, Kerry said: "Yes. That is not a litmus test, so to speak." In an interview after he said: "I don't want to get into an argument about litmus tests. The focus is on the constitutional right that Roe established in America. I want jurists to agree, who swear to uphold the Constitution." More Kerry: "If some people want to call it a test, they can call it a test." Univ. of WI prof Donald Downs, on Kerry's jud nominee comments: "I can't think of any example where it's been put that baldly." More Downs: "You know that that's sort of behind the agenda of some people, but to come out and say so specifically that's pretty much unprecedented." RNC spokesperson Jim Dyke said Kerry "sounds like he's willing to say anything to get elected." NARAL IA dir. Brenda Kole, who asked the question of Kerry, said: "I was expecting a confident answer from him." But ex-Univ. of WI prof Charles Johnson said Kerry's statements on "regime change" and jud nominees "are either boldly calculated to appeal to liberal voters or careless and potentially damaging" (Beaumont, Des Moines Register, 4/9). More Kerry, after his speech: "Litmus tests are politically motivated tests; this is a constitutional right." He "contrasted" Roe support "because it is a constitutional right" with GOP demands that jud nominees oppose abortion rights and said: "They're trying to undo a constitutional right. That's the difference." In his remarks 4/8, Kerry also "echoed a warning" ex-VP Al Gore made about the president's ability to shape SCOTUS

Brace yourselves for this one, Mountaineers: West Virginia might not legitimately be a State of the Union, but a mere illegal breakaway province of the Commonwealth of Virginia. In the summer of 1861, following the outbreak of the Civil War, thirty-five counties of Virginia west of the Shenandoah Valley and north of the Kanawha River met in convention in the town of Wheeling, to consider seceding from secessionist Virginia. In short order, the Wheeling convention declared itself the official, lawful, loyal government of Virginia and organized a proposed new State of (what would come to be called) West Virginia. Then, in what must certainly rank [*294] as one of the great constitutional legal fictions of all time, the legislature of Virginia (at Wheeling) and the proposed government of the new State of West Virginia (at Wheeling), with the approval of Congress, agreed to the creation of a new State of West Virginia (at Wheeling), thereby purporting to satisfy the requirements of Article IV, Section 3 of the Constitution for admission of new States "formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State." n1

...[I]s it clear that the text of the Constitution permits creation of new States out of existing States at all, irrespective of anybody's "consent"? A careful look at Article IV, Section 3 reveals a subtle ambiguity: A semicolon, rather than a comma, separates the "Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States" clause - which contains the consent requirements - from the prohibition of new States being "formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State." n3

Should the semicolon be understood as separating two distinct commands - as appears to be the case with the first semicolon of Article IV, Section 3, separating the grant of power to Congress to admit new States from the (two separate?) limitations on the power of Congress to admit States in the special case (cases?) of States formed by junction or separation, out of existing States? If so, even formal, legal-fiction consent does not matter: The limitation on admission of States carved from the "jurisdiction" of an existing State is a flat prohibition, not a description of circumstances for which consent is required; the consent proviso only applies to new States created by the junction of two or more existing States, or parts thereof, and thus cannot save poor West Virginia (and probably cannot save Kentucky, Maine, and possibly Vermont, either) from unconstitutionality. Indeed, even if the semicolon is merely an overgrown comma, and not a hard clause-break, the same conclusion might follow under the grammatical convention that a qualifying phrase (usually) modifies only the immediately preceding antecedent phrase. Both grammar rules and punctuation marks thus appear to conspire against the constitutionality of West Virginia.
...
Part II, in addition to offering what we immodestly think is the most comprehensive analysis ever written on the linguistic meaning and original understanding of the Constitution's use of semicolons and antecedent phrase modification, offers serious lessons of more general application, concerning what should count as persuasive evidence of constitutional meaning, and the relationship of considerations of text, history, structure, purpose, intention, and accident, in theories of constitutional interpretation.

Overall, the clear and constant reporting of military operations benefits citizens at home and abroad. The steady stream of information allows for stances on the war that are based in fact. Protests, be they for or against the conflict, carry little weight when the protestors are not informed. The media's intensive efforts have resulted in a public that is more educated about -- and involved in -- its government's military decisions. Perhaps as important as informing U.S. citizens, the media's coverage has made the military's actions far more transparent. Even those nations opposed to war can be more confident that this conflict will not be conducted in secret. On the other hand, this barrage of information does not guarantee a comprehensive understanding of the situation. People are easily swayed by graphic images or reports of casualties. We need to be cautious to see photographs and reports for what they are: small pieces of a much larger picture.

"2-4-6-8...stop the date rape" and "Hey hey, ho ho...sexual assault has got to go"
or something to that effect
Pots and pans banged
Sexual Assault Awareness march down frat row
Any more appropriate than having a protest against Affirmative Action outside of Cutter Shabazz?

Another school of radicals does some imagining of its own. It envisages an international political monolith with which to replace America and indeed all of liberal democracy in the West. These yearnings are embodied in a doctrine called “transnational progressivism,” which is gaining prominence in law schools, for example, at Princeton and Rutgers. As John Fonte of the Hudson Institute points out, professors in this camp argue for the establishment of a new transnational regime, or world government, that is post-liberal democratic and, in the American context, post-Constitutional and post-American. Within such a regime the key political unit would not be the individual citizen who voluntarily associates with fellow citizens but the racial, ethnic, or gender group into which one is born.

1. There is no such thing as transnational progressivism.
2. There is no such place as Princeton Law School.
3. The nonexistent ideology of transnational progressivism is not being taught at Princeton’s nonexistent law school or any other (real or fictional) place.
4. The National Review is lying to you.

A bill before the Florida Legislature would ban state aid to university and college students who are citizens of countries on the State Department's list of nations that sponsor terrorism.

The proposal was drafted by state Rep. Dick Kravitz, who said he doesn't like the idea that the United States is educating people who will return to regimes that oppose America.

The bill would bar state aid from going to university students from six of the seven countries on the State Department list: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya and North Korea.

Though valid military targets, most Iraqi combatants are forced conscripts who want no fight. They're poorly trained and poorly equipped, with almost no chance of survival should they be foolish enough to discharge any weapon: The U.S. military locates and obliterates sources of fire with almost robotic competence. Most Iraqi combatants are in uniform not through voluntary choice, as is the case with all U.S. and British combatants, but because they were impressed. Iraqi men cannot refuse conscription, and face summary execution if they try to return to their families. It's awful when even one Iraqi civilian dies, but civilian deaths are occurring in small numbers by the standards of warfare. Iraqi combatants are dying en masse. This conflict must end soon so that the United States can stop doing what is, by the logic of war, entirely legal, proper, fair, and necessary--killing Iraqi soldiers.

"...I cannot support this military action in the Persian Gulf at this time. Both the timing and the policy are subject to question. I am opposed to endangering the lives of brave American men and women in the military for action in Iraq that will not effect real change in that nation. If, however, military action is taken, all Americans will fully support our troops in battle." -A statement issued by Trent Lott in 1998