Of course the Republicans are not trying to "take out" Hillary. Of the Democratic nomination that is.

They believe her nomination is probably inevitable and, rightly or wrongly, that she would be the easiest to beat. They've read Br'er Rabbit. They know full well that their attacks on her now are the best thing she has going for her.

The Republican candidates also realize that their attacks on her are red meat for the Republican base, and gives them a running start on the general election.

And if they can provoke her into responding directly to individual attacks, so much the better for the attacker.

It's a win-win situation for them.

What have they, the wounded vets, done for them, the administration, since they were wounded?

After all, they were paid in expectation of doing a job, and why should they be excused from their obligations just because they were clumsy or incompetent enough to get in the way of a bomb or something. And to top it off, they expect to receive free medical care to treat the injuries caused by their failure to duck in time. Such ingratitude.

Before anyone sends me a poison bytes message, I'm being sarcastic here.

Jonathan Schell says: " I would say, though, that the surefire way of ensuring that Iran will go for the bomb is to attack them. If, the day before, they were ready to stop short of having the bomb, the day after, they'll go for it and they'll get it, too."

He, like just about everyone else, is missing the essential point. If Bush bombs Iran, Iran won't wait until it has its nuclear weapons; it will attack our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, with a vengeance. They have three to four times the number of our forces there, already overstretched and decimated after going on five years of war there. We don't have nearly enough reinforcements to meet that threat. And nearly all war materiel for our forces in Iraq must be shipped to Kuwait, the last 800 miles through the narrow Strait of Formuz and the Persian Gulf, with Iran controlling the entire northeast shores of those waters. Even with our still powerful naval and air protection Iran could make that shipping very difficult and costly. The stuff must then traverse supply routes close to Iran to reach Baghdad and other locations where needed, easy prey for the Iranian military and its Iraqi Shiite militia allies.

A war with Iran now could not be won with conventional weapons alone!

Faced with almost certain annihilation of our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan or ignominious surrender, the pressure on Bush and Cheney to use nuclear weapons would be overwhelming. Assuming they need any pressure.

Are even they so dense as to not realize that bombing Iran will lead inevitably to use of nuclear weapons? Or was that their Plan B for the Iraq war all along.

And will Russia and China, among the major nuclear powers, accede to nuclear weapons being used so close to their borders? Or will it precipitate the World War III Bush claims stopping the Iranians from developing the bomb would prevent?

Schell's concepts are based on the assumption that all the world leaders are rational. But is that assumption valid for Bush and Cheney? And faced with irrational foes, the rational are ofter forced into irrational acts of their own.

What is the difference between Regressives like Hucklabee and the ayatollahs and other Islamic religious leaders? Answer: The Islamic leaders still have the power over their subjects that the Christian churches once had, and their current zealots covet them.

It's no accident that that modernism in the West coincided with the decline of power and influence by the Christian churches. It's no accident that the Arabs, Persians and others of the Middle East, once the center of scientific and artistic development following the decline of the Roman and Greek empires, began to decline in direct proportion to the rising power of their Muslim religious leaders.

That's what Huckabee and his Regressive allies don't realize. They plan on imposing their will on the rest of us, and then using the might and power of the United States to impose their will on the rest of the World. But as happened with the Muslims and others throughout history, our might and power will decline in direct proportion to the power and influence of the Religious Regressives.

Modernity and Theocracy are not compatible.

And waiting in the wings will be the other powerful still secular powers such as China, Russia and Japan.

but not for the reasons he would like us to believe, or may even believe himself.

It's true that we've had no further terrorist attacks in this country since 9-11, but to argue that is because of the competence of the Bushies is ludicrous. Hundreds of billions for national security allocated on the basis of voting patterns and a useless war that has become a recruiting poster for terrorists has made us far less, not more, safe.

But why no further attacks so far? I've long suspected it's because the Bushies have caused real and lasting harm to this country beyond the wildest dreams of al Qaeda and other enemies, far beyond what they could ever hope to accomplish by Occasional terrorist attacks. Being rational people, they have realized that further attacks could lead to the removal of the greatest thing they have going for them: Bush and Company.

If I'm right we could be in real danger now, because future attacks would further help Bush by "proving" that he was right about the surveillance act.

It would also give him and Cheney their excuse to suspend the Constitution.

There is a certain amount of synergy between the Bushies and al Qaeda.