I only get exposed to the brilliant insights of NPR while in the shower. Just now I heard the brilliant analysis of an NPR correspondent in Iraq: he was commenting on the bombing in Nasiriyyah which killed many Italian troops, along with many innocent Iraqis. He said that Italian troops, unlike American troops, are not nice to the Iraqi people--I kid you not. He went on to say that Italian troops yell at Iraqis and do not treat them nice. In fact, Italian troops clearly did not want to be confused with American troops who are quite resented in the Sunni triangle, the Shi`ite parrallelogram, and the Kurdish trapezoid. I noticed that Italian military vehicles carry huge Arabic calligraphy identifying them "Italians" in order to distance themselves from the Americans. This chaos in Iraq will increasingly help the effort of those who may wish to impose yet another tyrancial rule in the country. So much for the American promises of "freedom" and "democracy" in Iraq, and elsewhere in the Middle East. But to be fair, Colin Powell did promise before the war to remake the Middle East. It has already been remade: into a brutal and bloody chaos, with human rights violations as rampant as ever. "The war on terrorism" continues.