What's At Stake? 2003: Oil and War (John Robb)

The upshot is that in order to meet global demand for oil over the next eight years, production from the Middle East is going to need to increase markedly -- specifically from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. There isn't any way around it.

This scenario wasn't nearly as scary as it is today until 9/11. Why? We felt that Saudi Arabia was a fragile nation, but one we could trust. Saudia Arabia's reserves and production capacity could shield us from any potential disruptions inflicted by Iran and Iraq. 9/11 shattered this notion. 15 out of the 19 attackers on 9/11 were Saudis. In any reasonable calculation it now appears that Saudi is as potentially volatile as Iraq and Iran. It is now a shadow member of Bush's "axis of evil."

    

G.I. Joy: Iraqis would support war to overthrow Saddam, says survey (The Independent)

Although they are suspicious of the Iraqi opposition abroad, a majority of Iraqis from all social classes say they see a US strike leading to a change of a regime as the only way they can lead normal lives after over twenty years of war, sanctions and economic misery.

"What we want is simply a dose of stability," said a student at Mosul University interviewed by the authoritative Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG). "We have suffered enough due to our leaders' mistakes."

The ICG carried out dozens of covert interviewsin the capital, Baghdad, the northern city of Mosul and the religious centre of Najaf on the Euphrates. Few Iraqis opposed an invasion for patriotic reasons or fear that an attack would lead to heavy civilian casualties.

"We do not particularly want a US military strike, but we do want political change," said a young architect in Baghdad. "We are even ready to live under international tutelage. We have nothing to lose, and it cannot be any worse than our current condition."

    

Big Words, Little Words: Cat People (Louis Menand, author of The Metaphysical Club, reviews The Cat in the Hat in The New Yorker)

Every reader of "The Cat in the Hat" will feel that the story revolves around a piece of withheld information: what private demons or desires compelled this mother to leave two young children at home all day, with the front door unlocked, under the supervision of a fish? Terrible as the cat is, the woman is lucky that her children do not fall prey to some more insidious intruder. The mother's abandonment is the psychic wound for which the antics of the cat make so useless a palliative. The children hate the cat. They take no joy in his stupid pet tricks, and they resent his attempt to distract them from what they really want to be doing, which is staring out the window for a sign of their mother's return. Next to that consummation, a cake on a rake is a pretty feeble entertainment.

This is the fish's continually iterated point, and the fish is not wrong. The cat's pursuit of its peculiar idea of fun only cranks up the children's anxiety. It raises our anxiety level as well, since it keeps us from doing what we really want to be doing, which is accompanying the mother on her murderous or erotic errand. Possibly the mother has engaged the cat herself, in order to throw the burden of suspicion onto the children. "What did you do?" she asks them when she returns home, knowing that the children cannot put the same question to her without disclosing their own violation of domestic taboos. They are each other's alibi. When you cheat, you lie.