I never supported the war in Iraq. I never supported it for a very simple reason: I did not believe that the war would improve the situation there. And now just how bad the situation is, well, that's quite clear. Basically, Americans pull out and there's a full-scale civil war. But staying in means putting in more troops, since our current forces haven't stopped the massacres.

And America's allies, what lovely creatures they are! The Sauds are supporting, even now, one set of combatants. The Sauds should never have been our allies, of course, but tell that to greedy oil men.

Just war theory, as it applies to intervening in foreign squabbles, amounts to this:

1. You may not choose a side if you cannot determine which side is overwhelmingly in the right, and which overwhelmingly in the wrong.

2. You may not intervene on any side if you cannot imagine a practical way to resolve the current injustices.

3. You may not intervene on a side that is in the right if, by choosing that side, you ensure that the side you choose becomes as bad as (or worse than) the side you have chosen to oppose.

There's more, but these points are enough to have nixed the idea of an Overthrowal War against the Ba'athist Regime in Iraq.

Now, a partition of Iraq might have succeeded, if that is what was determined going in, and that is what the conquering government stated up front. But this idea of keeping Iraq as one nation was stupid. These factions of Islam cannot get along.

But in a way that should be a comfort to us: their internecine conflicts are about our only hope. We certainly don't want Islam going completely fundamentalist and uniting against the West. That would entail such massive slaughter that, well, I shudder to think.

So, the best we could have done in Iraq was keep them separate, and, if that would have been feasible, that should have been the goal. If the Ba'athist regime was to be removed. But that was by no means a clear goal. Sure S. Hussein was a murderous tyrant. But he was also pliable, and allowed more freedom of religion in his country than anywhere in the Islamic world outside Turkey. Had not April Glaspie blurted out an untruth, the first Gulf War could have even been avoided.

Those are a lot of ifs, though. I have never seen one reason to believe Americans know Islam well enough to rule an Islamic country. I don't think it can be done. Islam has a built-in belief that the rulers must be Muslim. And that conquest of others was apropriate, but conquest by others must be resisted.

This is very central to the faith.

But our numbskull leaders don't have a clue about religion. They, themselves, either believe no religion (Cheney, the neocons), or they half-assedly believe in a dumbed-down Fundamentalism (Bush the Know-Nothing).

There can be no justification for a war of intervention that cannot be won. This is why the lead-up to the war was so filled with lies . . . about weapons of mass destruction and insinuations of a tie between Al Qaeda and the Ba'athists. For the truth could not support the war.

The number of Americans who were snookered into supporting the war, on such flimsy grounds, was amazing. But it was almost certainly a religious thing. American Christians and American Jews hate Islam. Well, so do I. Hatred can be justified. War, not so easy.

Americans wanted the war to be justifiable, because they wanted to kill Muslims, in revenge for the attack of 9/11. The war on Afghanistan was not enough for them.

Ah, bloodlust! Yes, it's that simple.

Even if those Americans who did support the war won't admit it, I believe that bloodlust was indeed the actual motivation for most of their support.

I understand it. I felt it. I dreamed of killing Muslims too. It's easy to get caught in this trap.

But I never did abandon my critical faculties in the lead-up to the war.

Most Americans never had them to give up in the first place.

That's why it can be so easy to lead a people into massive state-sponsored slaughter.