Our story continues over at ericberlin.com/blog.

So they found an illegal missile system in Iraq, and are in the midst of destroying it. Nobody else seems to be saying this, so I must be wrong, but my first thought was that this presents a small problem for Bush. If Bush says "Aha! See! Banned weapons! CHAAAARRGE!", the rest of the world can say: Wait a second. Before you wanted to invade because inspections weren't working. Now you want to invade because inspections are working. Under what possible circumstances will you actually change your mind about going to war? I say "small problem" because I think Bush has a reply for this kind of logic. How long did it take to find this illegal system? 10 weeks and then some? Did Iraq simply hand it over, as they were supposed to? No. From today's New York Times: "The inspectors learned of the range of the missiles from test results that were provided in the 12,000-page arms declaration Iraq delivered at the start of the inspections. The missile data was part of the relatively small amount of new useful information the inspectors found in the vast document." If I ask you for a needle, and you say, "Sure! I put it in that haystack over there. It's all yours!", that is not the same thing as being cooperative. Bush still has a perfectly lucid argument for getting rid of Hussein, and should be able to hold his ground. The problem for the doves is that charges of U.S. unilateralism are increasingly hard to swallow. Beginning with the letter from the "Gang of Eight," countries left and right are lining up behind our plans to invade. The idea that the U.S. is "going it alone" has been ridiculous for a long time now. How can Saddam's sympathizers make the U.S. look once again like a crazed loner cowboy bent on destruction? Well, if Bush could be forced into presenting a second UN resolution, that resolution can be summarily vetoed by France or Germany or Russia. Then, when Bush invades Iraq anyway, doves can trumpet that the U.S is going in without UN authority! Those crazy unilateralist cowboys are at it again! Yaaay! With the discovery of this missile system, France and Germany have been given powerful new ammunition to achieve this goal. If they can convince any of the "Gang of Eight" countries -- hell, even Portugal -- that inspections are working, U.S. could lose an ally, and such a loss would be trumpeted all over the media. If that begins to turn the tide against us, it might just force Bush and Powell into writing a second UN resolution. But I don't think that's going to happen. France and Germany have lost a lot of ground with their obstinance -- all they've done is make themselves fools in the eyes of our true allies. They're going to need more than a single small discovery to convince anybody that inspections are the future. What about all those mobile biological weapons lab?, we can counter. What about any other missiles that are lying around? If we have 10 weeks of inspections for every minor discovery, we're going to be here until 2035! The U.S. continues to have the stronger argument. The discovery of this missile system may start a pro-inspection rally, and that may cause Bush the tiniest of headaches, but I don't think this will be a problem for very long.

This is funny: How the Muslim world is viewed by Americans.

Congress is totally pissed at France and Germany, and I don't blame them. But now some congressmen are making noises about possible laws prohibiting the importation of French wine, or Evian water. Phooey, says I. If they pass such a law, it'll mean that 500+ powerful men got a chance to say "Nyahh nyahh" to our least friendly allies. A better idea is to allow all of America to show France and Germany how they feel -- let the wines come in and let us have the opportunity not to buy them. Let the Mercedes-Benzes grow rusty in their showrooms. Let the Evian water sit on the shelves. I'm drinking good old American water from now on! It's infused with that spunky can do spirit! I think sales of French and German products are going to suffer plenty, even without any action on Congress's part. And I think the message delivered by that decline will have more oomph if Congress has nothing to do with it.

Not to be outdone, Lea also has a new trick: Sneezing while her mouth is full of liquefied carrots. If I wasn't in the way, I'm sure she would have shot them thirty feet or more. But... I was in the way.

Alex's new trick: Climbing into his booster seat. It is a feat of contortion worthy of Cirque de Soleil, like watching a man fit himself into a picnic basket. First he hoists up one leg. Proportionally, this is the equivalent of me hoisting a leg over a wall that comes up to my rib cage. Then, with much grunting and effort, he grabs the back part of the seat and pulls himself up, so that he is kneeling in the chair, but facing the wrong way. Next he does some kind of full-body twist, getting his tush onto the seat but with his legs still tangled up beneath him. Finally he straightens out the legs and gives a satisfied smile, and my heart starts beating again. Soon this will all be commonplace, and I won't even watch while he performs this feat. But not yet.

Bin Laden is dead. If he was alive, he'd be making video after video, taunting the United States with his continued existence. I just do not buy into these audiotapes.

Holy moley, do I love this letter to the editor, from yesterday's New York Times. (It's the top letter.) It's so hard to choose a favorite line. How about this one: "A country that relegates poetry to the periphery risks the stunning lash of well-chosen words when it transgresses moral behavior." Golly, that's just a risk we'll have to take. By the way, what exactly is immoral about defending one's self from future attacks, or liberating an oppressed people from a tyrant? Please answer in the form of a limerick. I like this one, too: "Poetry is a defense against darkness; when we contemplate something as profound as killing other people to achieve an objective, poets have an obligation to give voice to doubt." Absolutely right, although I dare say that responsibility is not relegated solely to poets. By the way, you do realize that you only have this obligation because you live in a country with freedom of speech. Right? A stunning lash of well-chosen words in Iraq will get you very seriously dead. You know that, right? Finally: "To consider dropping bombs on children or flying hijacked planes into buildings is to be less than fully human." I completely agree. I assume you are talking about Palestinian suicide bombers, as well as the cretin terrorists responsible for 9/11. Unlike our enemies, the U.S. will not be targetting citizens, and in fact will be making strenuous efforts to minimize civilian casualties. It's incredibly ignorant to lump the U.S. together, morally, with the fundamentalists we are trying to thwart. Did the Times really see fit to print this letter? Doesn't it read like the lead editorial in a fourth-rate alternative weekly?

I've been fairly neutral about this new Homeland Security department -- all in all I don't think it'll be much more effective than what was in place beforehand, but its existence doesn't actually anger me like it does many others. And, yes, it seems like it has a great deal of boondoggle potential, but hell -- throwing money away in great heaping truckloads is what our government does. It's their specialty, whatever the political leanings of the administration. Tom Ridge, however, is absolutely killing himself in the credibility department. Has the man never read "The Boy Who Cried Wolf?" Here we are in a heightened state of Terror Alert -- so much so that the government is recommending that people buy plastic sheeting to post over their windows, to keep out all those nasty biological agents that are about to be released. But this new Terror Alert follows many others in which the government's beating of the Drums of Panic (I believe that was a magic item in Dungeons & Dragons) was followed by... resounding silence. Why, then, should we believe this one? Especially since, on the Today Show, Ridge proclaimed that the reason why this warning was so serious was because they had "specific information." But he went on to say that the specific information did not point to a time, a date, a place, or a method of attack. What else is there to be specific about? There are those who believe all this sounding of alarums is just a way to constantly remind people that The Enemy is At Our Doorstep, and nothing can stop them short of war, War, WAR!!! In other words, that this is all a bunch of malarkey -- propoganda -- generated to turn us into a nation of hawks. I don't believe it. Because surely we are being plotted against by those who despise us. But that doesn't mean the government needs to send us into a daily panic. If you have credible information about a specific threat, tell the people in that specific area to get inside and put up their plastic sheeting, and send the National Guard in to put a stop to it. If all you have are smoky generalities, I for one don't even want to hear about it. I've got a life to live. Okay -- this just in, literally this very moment, from CNN.com: "Reports of planned al Qaeda attacks which led to heightened terror alert are "most specific we have seen," CIA Director George Tenet tells Senate panel. Details to come." This is what I'm talking about. If this situation is as bad as Mr. Tenet suggests, I might recommend he deal with the problem first. Convene the Senate panel afterwards.

Just in time for Valentine's Day, this extremely nasty little sliding block puzzle, by Ed Pegg Jr., whose MathPuzzle.com never fails to amaze, even if I don't know what the hell he's talking about half the time. (Here's a the beginning of a sample puzzle from a couple of months ago: "Define the n-complement of a number j as the number k, such that corresponding digits of j and k always add to n." Maybe I'll just stick to crosswords.)

Great article in this week's Weekly Standard about the brouhaha that resulted when a Cincinnati theatre commissioned a play about the Israel/Palestinian conflict. (The play came under fire by Muslims in that city, who deemed themselves insulted despite the fact that, if anything, the play was slanted ideologically in their favor.) Written by one of my favorite political writers, Christopher Caldwell. Best line: "If the target of a potential comment is the final arbiter of whether it's an "insult" or illegitimate, then we live henceforth in an indefinite state of emergency in which freedom of speech is, de facto, suspended." Read the whole thing here.