GRAPHIC IRAQI REALITY: Yea, I saw the video of Nicholas Berg’s untimely end in Iraq. Someone at work found a site with it. It’s so awful that my mind couldn’t accept it literally. No, I subconsciously thought, that can’t really be happening; it’s just another scene from a violent TV show or Hollywood movie.

Sure, the USA got rid of Saddam Hussein and his horrible style of torture and violence. But we haven’t brought civilization back to Iraq; we obviously haven’t vanquished the mindset that develops in the midst of poverty and ignorance, a mindset which accepts violence and blood feuding as a given. Instead of infusing the Iraqis with order and civilization, it looks as though they have infected many of our soldiers with disregard for human dignity. After the Weapons of Mass Destruction rationale was found to be a canard, Mr. Bush and company espoused the notion that this was a fight for the redemption of the Arab and Moslem world via civilized institutions like constitutions, democracy, education, free markets and human rights. If that’s what this war is about, then it’s pretty clear that we are losing.

I’M ON A MEXICAN UFO, WHOA, WHOA: On a lighter note, I enjoyed the report about the Mexican Air Force pilots who were flying along on a routine surveillance mission, then suddenly picked up a bunch of strange, super-fast moving things on both their radar and their infra-red scopes. Interestingly enough, they never saw the darn things; the pilots were relying entirely on their instrument observations. Do machines lie? Well, sometimes … but it would be awfully strange for two different detection systems to simultaneously give crazy readings like that. Was it all just a coincidence? The truth is out there … down Mexico way.