MEANINGLESS SUFFERING

Raven is distracting himself reading my horoscope in the web.

“All they’re doing today is asking you questions: ‘Are the scars on your soul necessary, is there such a thing as meaningless suffering? Etc.’”

It’s because they don’t have any answers, Rave. Not for me. Not for the people in Bagdad experiencing the meaningless suffering inflicted by Tomahawk missiles.

“Putin is urging the US to stop the war:

'I would like to underline that military action is happening in contradiction of international public opinion and in despite of principles of international law,' said Putin. Moscow had fought hard to have any military action against Baghdad approved by the UN Security Council. 'This military action is unjustified,' he said. 'There has been no answer to the main question: Are there weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and if so, which ones?' He said that Washington was never able to prove that Baghdad actually posed a threat to international security. 'Furthermore, Iraq has presented no danger -- not for neighboring countries nor for any region in the world,' he said. Putin said that chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix stated in his latest reports that Saddam's regime was improving its cooperation with the United Nations and that inspection should have been given a few more months to run their course. 'Iraq did not hinder the work of international inspectors -- quite the opposite, Putin said."

None of that makes any difference, Rave. Baby Bush performed the only legal act he was required to do before dropping the bombs: to inform Congress that diplomacy had failed. Congress had already given away its right to declare war last year when it authorized military action in the event that all diplomatic means were exhausted.

"Yeah, right. Threatening, blustering, lying, bullying all of his allies and bribing some of them--the key cards in the diplomatic deck."

Guaranteed to fail. Guaranteed to let him test all the latest military toys on real targets: defenseless civilians.

"The way he's going, pretty soon he won't have any potential clients left to buy the new toys."

Raven, you are way ahead of him. He isn't capable of drawing those kinds of conclusions.

"He's only capable of inflicting meaningless suffering?"

I believe so. And I feel an enormous sense of shame.

"That makes two of us."

Raven hands me a cup of cold coffee.