The knives come out: Now that the war has officially taken longer than 5 days, I'm on the official watch for the Democrats to go on the attack. Book-makers have already closed the bet that Kerrey will be first. However, it will be interesting to see who else will make a stink. When it started, even Daschle was saying we had to get behind the President. I don't think any senior official at the White House or Pentagon ever said that the war would go quickly, but certainly the rhetoric of "awe"-inspiring bombing made it clear that everyone was expecting the Iraqis to throw down their guns. Why? Well, besides the obvious point that we were better armed, equipped and trained, everyone assumed that the majority of Iraqis hated Saddam and therefore loved the U.S. In reality, it seems more likely that if the Iraqis hate Saddam, it's only because their own guy isn't in power. Stated another way, reverse the tables about 30 years ago, and who knows, Hussein could have been our Karzai, promising to bring stability to the region after we kicked out the evil Kurd or Shia ruling forces. Anyway, I think what we're seeing is that fear is a tremendous motivator, but also that we're not fighting to liberate a bunch of democratically-minded Americans. The game over there is about 100 times more complex than what we deal with over here.