Oh, get me. I say I'm taking a break for a few days and I'm back the next day. But I figure these two analyses are important and timely and deserve to be read as widely as possible.
The English-language Saudi website Arab News devotes an editorial headed Creating Bin Ladens to what it sees happening on the Arab street:
"The most astounding aspect of this bitterness toward the US and UK, and the willingness of young Arabs to die fighting them, is that most of them probably never gave Iraq a second thought a few weeks ago. They were anything but militant; they have been turned into militants by events."
And the Guardian's Jonathan Freedland - who has been, if anything, pro-war - gazes aghast at the story, broken by his newspaper of the US plan for post-war Iraq, which calls for 23 ministries all headed by Americans, with help from the likes of the "controversial" - hell, let's just get to the point and say "corrupt" - Iraqi exile, Ahmed Chalabi:
"This is a form of foreign rule so direct we have not seen its like since the last days of the British empire. It represents a break with everything America has long believed in."
Frankly Jonathan, some of us have felt that way all along …