Was it Worth it?

Another editorial by the Journal/Sentinel on the war in Iraq. No surprises here.

It was two years ago today that U.S. troops moved across the border from Kuwait into Iraq and began the campaign of "shock and awe" that quickly led to the downfall of Saddam Hussein. The people of Iraq have been rescued from the predations of a cruel dictator, but the postwar occupation of Iraq has not been an unqualified success.

Define unqualified success. A war where we drop a few bombs, dust ourselves off and proclaim victory? No, Clinton tried that--his policies led to the 9/11 attack on U.S. soil. A war where there are no casualties? A war where everything (including the behavior of a highly unpredictable enemy) is planned, down to the minute? (I know highly rehearsed theatrical performances where everyone is 'on the same page' that could never achieve the level of an 'unqualified success' as defined by the J/S).

Actually, given all of the liberal hysteria at the outset of the war (there were going to be hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilian casualties, Saddam was going to unleash biological and chemical weapons--that he didn't have--on our troops, the 'Arab street' was going to rise up against America in unprecedented fury, and our imperialist arrogance was going to bring on more 9/11-style attacks)--NONE OF WHICH HAS COME TRUE--I think 'unqualified success' is a pretty good description.

I suspect that the Iraqi people, who are no longer subject to random torture and death might have a different definition of 'unqualified success'. Here's a post from Instapundit who quotes a post from an Iraqi blogger. Follow the link to read his entire post.

TWO YEARS LATER, WAS THE IRAQ WAR WORTH IT? Iraqi blogger Husayn Uthman writes:

So you ask me, Husayn, was it worth it. What have you gotten? What has Iraq acheived? These are questions I get a lot.

To may outsiders, like those who protested last year, who will protest today. This was a fools errand, it brought nothing but death and destruction. I am sheltered in Iraq, but I know how the world feels, how people have come to either love or hate Bush, as though heis the emobdiement of this war. As though this war is part of Bush, they forget the over twenty million Iraqis, they forget the Middle Easterners, they forget the average person on the street, the average man with the average dream.

Ask him if it was worth it. Ask him what is different. Ask him if he would go through it again, go ahead ask him, ask me, many of you have.

Now I answer you, I answer you on behalf of myself, and my countrymen. I dont care what your news tells you, what your television and newspapers say, this is how we feel. Despite all that has happened. Despite all the hurt, the pain, blood, sweat and tears. These two years have given us hope we never had.

Egyptian blogger Big Pharaoh comments: "I believe it should be published in newspapers worldwide. Reading about Husayn's feeling is special because he lost his cousin in the Hilla terrorist bombing."

posted at 12:17 PM by Glenn Reynolds

Was World War II an 'unqualified success'? If so, on what basis? I fear that, had the J/S Editorial Board been in charge during World War II, the Hitler party would still be in power and the Jewish race would have been exterminated from the face of the earth.

But there's more from the J/S...

Brushing aside the qualms of the United Nations, the Bush administration led an invasion of Iraq with the avowed purpose of ridding that country of weapons of mass destruction. The existence of the weapons had been attested to by the CIA and was endlessly cited by President Bush and others. Two years later, it has become a virtual certainty that those weapons did not exist at the time of the invasion.

Okay, where do I start? First of all, the J/S Editors seem to ignore the stunning New York Times article (quoted here in an earlier blog) that seems to suggest that WMD did exist and were carefully spirited out of the country during the early weeks of the war. Of course, you won't read ANYTHING about that in the pages of the Journal/Sentinel or on their editorial page.

Next, WMD was NEVER the sole reason for invading Iraq (which one might forget in the constant liberal drumbeat about WMD). President Bush had this to say in his radio address on March 15, 2003:

As diplomatic efforts continue, we must never lose sight of the basic facts about the regime of Baghdad.

We know from recent history that Saddam Hussein is a reckless dictator who has twice invaded his neighbors without provocation -- wars that led to death and suffering on a massive scale. We know from human rights groups that dissidents in Iraq are tortured, imprisoned and sometimes just disappear; their hands, feet and tongues are cut off; their eyes are gouged out; and female relatives are raped in their presence.

As the Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel, said this week, "We have a moral obligation to intervene where evil is in control. Today, that place is Iraq." (emphasis mine)

We know from prior weapons inspections that Saddam has failed to account for vast quantities of biological and chemical agents, including mustard agent, botulinum toxin and sarin, capable of killing millions of people. We know the Iraqi regime finances and sponsors terror. And we know the regime has plans to place innocent people around military installations to act as human shields.

Read the text of the entire radio address here.

Third, even IF the WMD did not exist (a virtual impossibility, since Saddam used them on his own people--but let's make the argument, just for fun), EVERYONE on the face of the planet (including Clinton, Kerry, Edwards, the beloved United Nations, etc.) thought that they did.

People simply have to operate on the best information they have at the time to make decisions. "Analysis paralysis" is not a good characteristic for a world leader.

The Monday Morning Quarterback is always secure in his smug satisfaction that he is smarter, more savvy and more sophisticated than those folks actually out on the field, taking the hard knocks and making the split-second decisions (good and bad) required to win...but no one seriously would put the Monday Morning Quarterback out on a field during an actual game. Because we all know that would spell disaster.

Let's MOVE ON beyond this eternal harping about the causes for the war and look FORWARD to the policies that will help the future of Iraq become an 'unqualified success' for the people in that country and in the region. And recognize the value of President Bush's stubborn belief that ALL people in the world deserve independence and freedom from tyranny.

I believe that history will be the judge...

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty. - John F. Kennedy

Update on Ward Churchill & "Academic Freedom"

I could not have said it better myself, so I won't. From Belmont Club.

To Newsweek's Paul Tolme, University of Colorado outgoing President Elizabeth Hoffman's problems with Ward Churchill were all about preserving Free Speech in a nation grown increasingly intolerant.

... earlier this year, ethnic-studies professor Ward Churchill ignited a fierce debate over academic freedom because of a 2001 essay in which he called victims of the September 11 attacks "little Eichmanns." Hoffman and many members of the faculty defended Churchill's right to his opinions while outside of campus, and Colorado lawmakers called for his dismissal. ...

Hoffman seemed particularly concerned about the Churchill situation. ... "We are so deeply divided as a country." This division, she says, threatens the foundation of liberal higher education. "The modern research university is a big and complex place," she says, "but it ultimately is about the generation of new ideas and the transfer of those new ideas to students. ... What's tricky is sheltering new ideas without alienating the legislatures that control state budgets.

Two ideas are striving for primacy in Hoffman's construct. The first is her idea of the academy as a conservator of every specimen of mental life, the counterpart of a biological repository containing bacterial and viral samples; some virulent and some extremely beneficial. The second is the idea of the academy as a transmitter of ideas. In her words, "the modern research university is a big and complex place, but it ultimately is about the generation of new ideas and the transfer of those new ideas to students."

Logically, the chief problem inherent in this duality is less about 'sheltering new ideas' from a public reluctant to support them than about reconciling conservatory and scholarly functions with the pedagogical ones. Just as modern medicine trains physicians to distinguish between poisons and therapeutic drugs, the difference often being simply the size of the dose, the modern university must above all train its students to discerningly choose from the garden of concepts it so carefully cultivates, not simply engage in "the transfer of those new ideas to students" as if they were so many hotdogs in a cafeteria line.

Ironically, the public glare focused upon Ward Churchill's ideas in the aftermath of his "little Eichmanns" essay provided the scholarly scrutiny that the University of Coloardo itself neglected to supply. Did the US government actually specify a 'blood quantum' for Native Americans? Did US troops really distribute smallpox-impregnated blankets to tribes and with what precautions to themselves? Did Professor Churchill really provide the content of books on which his name appears or did he swipe it from some other scholar? Those are questions which have been dissected at length by persons "outside the campus" and even by "Colorado lawmakers". That they were not raised or even contemplated by academic departments at the University of Colorado constitutes a failure of its most basic mission. Universities not in the business of asking these these questions are arguably not institutions of higher learning at all. That neglect, not the discussion which her University went so far out of its way to avoid, "threatens the foundation of liberal higher education".

posted by wretchard at 11:43 PM

Where Have All the Weapons Gone?

Very interesting story in The New York Times. Apparently, there was a highly organized effort to remove materials from Iraq's key weapons installations immediately after the fall of Baghdad. These were not guys running down the streets, carrying TVs, but cranes and trucks removing equipment from about 90 key sites in Iraq.

This comes from an analysis of satellite photography by two United Nations commissions--the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Monitoring, Verfication and Inspection Commission (so cannot be branded by the left as 'more Bush lies').

Dr. Sami al-Araji, the Iraqi deputy ministery of industry, said that the missing material included:

...equipment capable of making parts for missiles as well as chemical, biological and nuclear arms was missing from 8 or 10 sites that were the heart of Iraq's dormant program on unconventional weapons.

and then later in the article:

The first wave came for the machines. The second wave, cables and cranes. The third wave came for the bricks.

The NYT article goes on to say...

In its most recent report to the United Nations Security Council, in October, the agency said it "continues to be concerned about the widespread and apparently systematic dismantlement that has taken place at sites previously relevant to Iraq's nuclear program."

Agency inspectors, in visiting other countries, have discovered tons of industrial scrap, some radioactively contaminated, from Iraq, the report noted. It added, however, that the agency had been unable to track down any of the high-quality, dual-use equipment or materials.

The disappearance of such equipment," the report emphasized, "may be of proliferation significance."

The monitoring commission has filed regular reports to the Security Council since raising alarms last May about looting in Iraq, the dismantlement of important weapons installations and the export of dangerous materials to foreign states.

Read the article here. So, why isn't this front-page news? And how many folks do you think will be lining up to apologize to President Bush when we find out that Saddam DID have WMD??? (Don't hold your breath--it could be hazardous to your health!!!)

The Fugitive

Amazing story from Atlanta, where a petite, blonde widowed mother (with a little help from a Friend) accomplished what the entire Atlanta criminal justice system could not. I heard Ashley Smith on NBC's Today Show this morning describe how she read from The Purpose-Driven Life to Brian Nichols, the fugitive who had killed several people and eluded Atlanta police for hours.

Read the article here.

An Oxymoron: The "Best" of Dan Rather

While the "best" of Dan Rather might seem an oxymoron, check out The Media Research Center's post here.

One of most amazing things about Rather is the fact that he appears to be completely unaware of his own bias (either that or he is a bald-faced liar).

I'm biased. I know and admit I am biased. Fortunately, no one has asked me to put myself in a position where I have to represent myself as UNBIASED, because, frankly, it would not be possible. In fact, I don't think I know anyone who is NOT biased.

But isn't it reasonable to expect that people in the news media (not the editorialists or commentators, but the 'hard news' folks) reign in their personal opinion and present the FACTS as clearly and unadorned as possible, so that the viewer/listener/reader can make up their own minds? Isn't it total arrogance for the mainstream media to believe that they have to tell us what to think? As if we are incapable of coming up with our own valid opinions based on reality?

And knowing that the public is becoming more and more skeptical of the media, don't you think they would bend over backwards to avoid the appearance of bias?

Saddam Capture: The Michael Moore Film Version?

Here's the latest credibility-buster from the MSM.

Check out the UPI story here about the "former US Marine" who claims that the capture of Saddam Hussein was fictionalized by the U.S. Army.

A former U.S. Marine who participated in capturing ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein said the public version of his capture was fabricated.

Ex-Sgt. Nadim Abou Rabeh, of Lebanese descent, was quoted in the Saudi daily al-Medina Wednesday as saying Saddam was actually captured Friday, Dec. 12, 2003, and not the day after, as announced by the U.S. Army.

"I was among the 20-man unit, including eight of Arab descent, who searched for Saddam for three days in the area of Dour near Tikrit, and we found him in a modest home in a small village and not in a hole as announced," Abou Rabeh said.

"We captured him after fierce resistance during which a Marine of Sudanese origin was killed," he said.

He said Saddam himself fired at them with a gun from the window of a room on the second floor. Then they shouted at him in Arabic: "You have to surrender. ... There is no point in resisting."

"Later on, a military production team fabricated the film of Saddam's capture in a hole, which was in fact a deserted well," Abou Rabeh said.

Abou Rabeh was interviewed in Lebanon.

Then check out this site, where a number of fact-finders weigh in:

His story is a load of bull. Saddam was captured by Task Force 121, which is composed mainly of Delta Force (more information available here). No marines participated in the capture of Saddam Hussein.

Also an interesting example of the blogosphere at work. Perhaps UPI should hire a few bloggers to 'fact check' for them!

Support from where? (Not the British press!?!?)

The cover story of The Independent tomorrow here - "Was Bush Right After All?" Read the whole thing.

Then, if you aren't already smiling enough, check out this site: I am not Saddam Hussein.

Ward Churchill--An Equal Opportunity Cheater

I know I shouldn't devote any more time or energy to this guy, but it's kind of like driving past a train wreck. Horrible--but you just have to keep looking. Apparently, the only 'freedom' that Ward is interested in is the freedom to help himself to others' work.

Read the article here from the CBS4 Denver News website about the latest antics from Ward Churchill. Be sure to click on the video (on the right side of the page, entitled "CBS4 Video: Churchill's Aggressive Response To Artwork Controversy").

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's editorial "Triumph for free speech" lauds UWW for allowing Churchill to speak. Check out Ward's support for free speech and freedom of the press in the video clip.

I wager that he will self-destruct shortly.

More original art from Ward here.

...With a little help from their friends

Gibran Tueni, one of the leaders of the opposition in Lebanon and the editor of Lebanon's largest newspaper, An-Nahar, gave an amazing interview to Fox's Jennifer Griffin last Thursday (March 3rd) on Special Report with Brit Hume.

I was waiting for a transcript (and even emailed FNC for one), but they don't seem to be releasing one. So, with the aid of my trusty VCR, here it is (could be a blog 'exclusive'...who knows? Just remember you read it here first!!!)

Jennifer:
In his State of the Union address, President Bush vowed American help in spreading freedom throughout the Middle East. A leader of Lebanon's opposition, Gibran Tueni, editor of Lebanon's largest newspaper, says that was a turning point for their movement to get Syria out of Lebanon.

Gibran:
Huge impact. A huge impact. You know, really, people felt very happy when President Bush was re-elected. Believe it or not, we had a headline that day which was on eight columns--one word--Bush. Like that. You know why? Simply because, we think that is the first time that an American president is speaking clearly about democracy and is serious about implementing democracy in the Middle East.

Really, the Lebanese were always cautious about the American policy in the Middle East. The Lebanese always thought that the Americans bartered them with the Syrians. Lebanese are still cautious and afraid that one day or another, you will have a Syrian/American agreement, you know, and Lebanese will pay the price.

What helped a lot also, I think, really, is that this is the first time that we felt that maybe we are not going to pay the price alone. Because at the time we were outspoken, but you were killed.

Jennifer:
Lebanon is not the only place in the Arab World where people once too scared to express themselves are speaking up. The gun is quickly being replaced by the ballot box and free speech. Iraqis and Palestinians have just voted in their first free and fair elections. And now the Lebanese are throwing off the yoke of Syrian occupation.

Gibran:
If President Bush is serious about talking about democracy in the Middle East, you have a democratic state here. Just help us to preserve the democracy. We are not asking, you know, for the six feet of Marines here. We don't need it. We know how to deal by ourselves.

Jennifer:But they need a little help from their friends.

Imagine the impact. A free and democratic Middle East, whose citizens feel a debt of gratitude to the United States for our support....

The Significance of January 30th

Great editorial from Bill Kristol in The Weekly Standard on the notion that the January 30th Iraqi election will prove to be a "turning point", affecting politics in the Middle East for years to come.

History is best viewed in the rear-view mirror. It's hard to grasp the significance of events as they happen. It's even harder to forecast their meaning when they're only scheduled to happen. And once they occur, it's usually the case that possible historical turning points, tipping points, inflection points, or just points of interest turn out in the cold glare of history to have been of merely passing importance.

But sometimes not. Just four weeks after the Iraqi election of January 30, 2005, it seems increasingly likely that that date will turn out to have been a genuine turning point. The fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, ended an era. September 11, 2001, ended an interregnum. In the new era in which we now live, 1/30/05 could be a key moment--perhaps the key moment so far--in vindicating the Bush Doctrine as the right response to 9/11. And now there is the prospect of further and accelerating progress.

He quotes Walid Jumblatt, the Lebanese Druze Muslim leader (quoted on this site in an earlier post), saying,

It's strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq. I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, 8 million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world. . . . The Syrian people, the Egyptian people, all say that something is changing. The Berlin Wall has fallen. We can see it.

Next in line is Claus Christian Malzahn of Der Spiegel, in his article "Could George W. Bush Be Right?"

President Ronald Reagan's visit to Berlin in 1987 was, in many respects, very similar to President George W. Bush's visit to Mainz on Wednesday. . . . The Germany Reagan was traveling in, much like today's Germany, was very skeptical of the American president and his foreign policy. When Reagan stood before the Brandenburg Gate--and the Berlin Wall--and demanded that Gorbachev "tear down this wall," he was lampooned the next day on the editorial pages. He is a dreamer, wrote commentators. Realpolitik looks different.

But history has shown that it wasn't Reagan who was the dreamer as he voiced his demand. Rather, it was German politicians who were lacking in imagination--a group who in 1987 couldn't imagine that there might be an alternative to a divided Germany. . . . When George W. Bush requests that Chancellor Schröder--who, by the way, was also not entirely complimentary of Reagan's 1987 speech--and Germany become more engaged in the Middle East, everybody on the German side will nod affably. But . . . Bush's idea of a Middle Eastern democracy imported at the tip of a bayonet is, for Schröder's Social Democratic party and his coalition partner the Green party, the hysterical offspring of the American neocons. Even German conservatives find the idea that Arab countries could transform themselves into enlightened democracies somewhat absurd...

Just a thought for Old Europe to chew on: Bush might be right, just like Reagan was then.

And finally...Kurt Anderson in New York Magazine...

Our heroic and tragic liberal-intellectual capaciousness is facing its sharpest test since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Back then, most of us were forced, against our wills, to give Ronald Reagan a large share of credit for winning the Cold War. Now the people of this Bush-hating city are being forced to grant the merest possibility that Bush, despite his annoying manner and his administration's awful hubris and dissembling and incompetence concerning Iraq, just might--might, possibly--have been correct to invade, to occupy, and to try to enable a democratically elected government in Iraq. . . .

It won't do simply to default to our easy predispositions--against Bush, even against war. If partisanship makes us abandon intellectual honesty, if we oppose what our opponents say or do simply because they are the ones saying or doing it, we become mere political short-sellers, hoping for bad news because it's good for our ideological investment.

It is too early to declare victory. The Middle East has a long and tortured history. There will doubtless be multiple setbacks and struggles ahead. But to quote Alexis de Toqueville:

"Patiently endured as long as it seemed beyond redress, a grievance comes to appear intolerable once the possibility of removing it crosses men's minds."

Perhaps the greatest gift of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush is their shared conviction that freedom is a possibility for all people and therefore allowing that dream to cross the minds of people everywhere.

Historic Change Sweeping Middle East

Amazing events unfolding in Lebanon....from AOL News. Check out the great pictures!

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said he expected Syrian troops to pull out of Lebanon in a few months, as hundreds of Lebanese protesters returned to central Beirut on Tuesday demanding Syria quit their country.

Syria has 14,000 troops in Lebanon, but its dominant role in the country has come under increasing pressure as a result of mass demonstrations sparked by the assassination last month of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri.

Two weeks of unprecedented protests forced the pro-Syrian cabinet of Prime Minister Omar Karami to step down on Monday, piling pressure on Damascus, and left officials with a complicated search for a new premier.

''It (withdrawal) should be very soon and maybe in the next few months. Not after that,'' Assad told Time magazine in an interview published on its Web site on Tuesday. ''I can't give you a technical answer. The point is the next few months.''

Meanwhile, Mark Steyn weighs in:

Consider just the past couple of days' news: not the ever more desperate depravity of the floundering "insurgency", but the real popular Arab resistance the car-bombers and the head-hackers are flailing against: the Saudi foreign minister, who by remarkable coincidence goes by the name of Prince Saud, told Newsweek that women would be voting in the next Saudi election. "That is going to be good for the election," he said, "because I think women are more sensible voters than men."

Four-time Egyptian election winner - and with 90 per cent of the vote! - President Mubarak announced that next polling day he wouldn't mind an opponent. Ordering his stenographer to change the constitution to permit the first multi-choice presidential elections in Egyptian history, His Excellency said the country would benefit from "more freedom and democracy". The state-run TV network hailed the president's speech as a "historical decision in the nation's 7,000-year-old march toward democracy". After 7,000 years on the march, they're barely out of the parking lot, so Mubarak's move is, as they say, a step in the right direction.

Meanwhile in Damascus, Boy Assad, having badly overplayed his hand in Lebanon and after months of denying that he was harbouring any refugee Saddamites, suddenly discovered that - wouldja believe it? - Saddam's brother and 29 other bigshot Baghdad Baathists were holed up in north-eastern Syria, and promptly handed them over to the Iraqi government.

And, for perhaps the most remarkable development, consider this report from Mohammed Ballas of Associated Press: "Palestinians expressed anger on Saturday at an overnight suicide bombing in Tel Aviv that killed four Israelis and threatened a fragile truce, a departure from former times when they welcomed attacks on their Israeli foes."

No disrespect to Associated Press, but I was disinclined to take their word for it. However, Charles Johnson, whose Little Green Footballs website has done an invaluable job these past three years presenting the ugly truth about Palestinian death-cultism, reported that he went hunting around the internet for the usual photographs of deliriously happy Gazans dancing in the street and handing out sweets to celebrate the latest addition to the pile of Jew corpses - and, to his surprise, couldn't find any.

Why is all this happening? Answer: January 30.

And from Powerline:

We're in a period right now where I can't wait to check the news every day. Events, especially in the Middle East, are moving in what would have been considered an impossibly hopeful direction just a few months ago. The Bush administration believed that if the door to democracy and reform were opened in Iraq, much of the Arab world might follow. This was always a big gamble--one that we supported in part because, as we've often said, no one has proposed a competing plan to deal, long-term, with the problem of Islamic terrorism.

Right now, President Bush's gamble is looking very good indeed. Something like 50 million people have been liberated in Afghanistan and Iraq. Positive developments are occurring before our eyes in Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. It's way too soon to proclaim the administration's strategy a success; indeed, we may not be sure in our lifetimes whether the strategy that underlay the Iraq war was a sound one. But right now, it sure is fun to read the headlines.

Of course, not everyone agrees. MSNBC's Question of the Day is: "Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria: Is the Bush Doctrine working?" Currently, 35% say "yes," while 65% say "no." These folks seem to have a high standard for what constitutes "working," which I suspect tells us more about MSNBC's readership than about the geopolitical merits of the administration's strategy.

The Milwaukee Journal/Sentinel has a great editorial on this topic, marred only by its puzzling reference to Warren Christopher. I guess they couldn't bring themselves to give any credit for the spread of freedom to You-Know-Who....

Traumatic Times for the Dems

Great article by Noemie Emery in The Weekly Standard, "Election Shock Treatment".

With things looking up for a change, this has been a rough patch of time for the Democrats. They have been suffering from Election Shock Treatment; which means the success of the Iraqi elections has shocked them into the realization that they may have to seek treatment, because of the trauma induced by the growing suspicion that President Bush has been right all along: right in the decision to go into Iraq; right in the decision to hang tough in Palestine; right in the belief that Muslims and Arabs may also want freedom; that elections there can be held, and succeed.

Liberals are always hot for democracy once the struggles are over: It's in the struggles themselves they slip up.

It is one thing to refuse to give credit to Bush for the remarkable events unfolding in the Middle East, but liberals take it a step further. Jumping on the bandwagon now after fighting tooth and nail against the very policies that got us here is almost too much to bear.

Claiming credit in retrospect for things you opposed at the time is a new high in chutzpah, or, if not that, in delusion. But delusion is what people retreat to when reality is much too traumatic. "Here's the great fear that I have," said comedian Jon Stewart once the Iraq elections were over. "What if Bush, the president, ours, has been right about this all along? I feel that my world view may not sustain itself, and I may, and again I don't know if I can physically do this, implode."

In light of the incredible events of the past week, it is even more true.