Well, the news from Iraq could certainly be worse. With regard to civilian casualties, for instance, it's not as if the Red Cross is complaining about trucks full of the body parts of mutilated civilians.

Oh, wait. They are:

"There has been an incredible number of casualties with very, very serious wounds in the region of Hilla," Huguenin said in a interview by satellite telephone.

"We saw that a truck was delivering dozens of totally dismembered dead bodies of women and children. It was an awful sight. It was really very difficult to believe this was happening."

Judging by Google News, this seems to be a story that the American media is remarkably unwilling to report -- rather like the Russian opposition to the war (which, by the way, Putin has moderated of late).

And what of the future? Dubya's crowd is, they insist, not planning on invasions of Iran and Syria -- the same way that they were not planning anything in particular about Iraq last August. But Tony Blair has already said he wants no part of those conflicts, which would leave the United States in a position of magnificent isolation. Or perhaps not; the might of Palau might still be with us...

For the next few years, no one in the world will be able to do anything about it. But the prospect of a superpower knocking off threats at its whim will give lots of people reasons to try.