Government boys play with their toys

H.L. Mencken once said that "Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under." Well, that's how I feel today as American missiles and bombs have begun raining down on Iraq. U.S. officials seem dead-set on making the lot of the Iraqi people -- already a nasty one under one of the world's continuing bumper crop of thuggish rulers -- even more unpleasant with a full-blown military invasion.

With luck, Saddam Hussein's troops will throw in the towel early, minimizing the damage to be expected from combat in that country. Then the Iraqi people will have the opportunity to discover whether an American military occupation government is truly preferable to a home-grown dictator.

If President Bush and his co-conspirators have made any serious attempt to link the Iraqi regime to al Q'aeda and the terrorist attacks of September 11, I missed it. So, apparently, did most of the rest of the world, with the notable exception of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who announced that he was convinced, but failed to get several members of his own cabinet with the program.

The "weapons of mass destruction" excuse most often flogged by the White House doesn't fly, unless Beijing is next on the list for the U.S. Army's world tour of well-armed despotisms.

So, many of us are left asking ourselves "why?" as a massive, potentially bloody and certainly expensive military adventure gets underway in the Middle East.

Given the growing excesses of Homeland Security here in the U.S., we have a personal interest in knowing what they think of U.S. generals as rulers and troops as keepers of the peace.

Stay tuned.