Perhaps I am deluded, but Saddam Hussein does not scare me. Neither does Osama bin Laden, although I would feel differently were he a head of state. But George Bush scares the shit out of me, and so does Tony Blair, albeit to a lesser extent commensurate with his sidekick status in world affairs. And why do they scare me? Because they invoke moral imperatives in their political actions. Morality has always been a refuge of scoundrels, but it becomes truly frightening when it is not feigned. And George Bush strikes me as a man who is not feigning it. More, he is incapable of feigning his moral outrage. After a debauched youth followed by Christian rebirth and return to the fold, he is convinced that God is on his side. And he is well armed. In short, we are up shit creek, no matter how we feel about the Iraq crisis or what we do about it. One and all, we are God’s pawns.