but on the sliding scale, I think we need to slide it a notch or two towards "caution towards our own."

I guess I am still stuck in this place that, since I could not agree with the rationale for the invasion, whether it lasts 7 days or 134 days won't really change my mind on that point. So, the loss of innocents, whether in the ratio of 100, 10 or 5-to-,1 all seems like a pretty sad, avoidable downside to me.

This is not to say that there aren't cruel, mean Saddamistas roaming Baghdad ready to fire their AKs into the river if in fact there really *was* a downed pilot bobbing around out there (and some POWs were certainly treated cruelly in 1991).

What I'm really feeling, though, is that the poor, shoeless, malnourished, uneducated 8-year-old girl who we are getting ready to maim or decapitate on a 100, or 10, or 5-to-1 basis doesn't matter nearly as much as the Marine second lieutenant who was the star quarterback on his high school football team in West Virginia.

Funny enough, on CNN right now, the medical correspondent just made a point along the lines of "while we're operating on wounded Iraqi POW's to save their lives, they're ambushing us and shooting our POW' in the head."

I'd be closing my eyes if I didn't acknowledge that we (the US) devote a significant portion of our efforts and various $75 billion allotments to things like medical care and humane management of POWs -- and that the people that we bomb or shoot (or folks from the "other side" who have been bombed or shot by the other side) can benefit from that and receive treatment in our care that they could not expect if the tables were turned.

I will stand skeptical on this CNN reporter's statement overall, though, ("they're ambushing us and shooting our POWs in the head"). On the first point, I have been remarking to myself that the term "ambush" seems to have come into a new, liberal usage that smacks of propaganda. On the second, I will wait for more information; the reporter's clear implication is that they were executed -- taken prisoner and then executed. I would say that the 5 poor bastards who could speak to that are not feeling the liberty to do so at this moment. CNN must have an inside source.

Still, with our sophisticated medical/surgical systems to care for both the maimed friend and foe and our well-trained MPs to manage POWs, we can certainly say how much more humane we are prepared to be. We don't routinely execute prisoners or our own wounded and episodes like the psychotic My Lais and the trigger-happy AC-130 massacres are the unfortunate exceptions, not the rules.

Doug took some grief for raising "blitzkrieg" and, while I think the parallels aren't supportable, I'm not sure that our intentions, our optimism, our faith in our PGMs, and our sense of righteousness are going to make much difference to those 5, 10, or 100 innocents if events and Saddam "force our hand" and compel us to act more aggressively to protect that second lieutentant. I think it'll pretty much be all one, big blitzkrieg to them.