I share your desire to see Mr. Cheney pay his due. I pray that charges are being mounted to be filed before his own ticker removes him from the fray.

Your comment about our forcing Japan to disarm may provide me the opportunity to make the point previous posts have skirted but fell short.

Moral examples! We try to make moral examples for our kids to follow. We want them to grow up to do the right thing, to live the moral life.

All societies, although one may differ from another as to what the right thing is, want their young to grow to up to be moral examples for their children.

However, when a child or citizen does the right thing because they are afraid to do otherwise, we call that behavior coerced, not moral. Following the laws of a social order may allow one to claim "I've led a moral life." But if upon questioning, it has been the punishment for not obeying the law that drove one's life, then I contend, one has not led a life out of a moral sense, but out of fear.

In my heart of hearts, brain of brains, it is moral examples the Universe looks for and commends. Socrates, Galileo, the one who didn't recant, Christ, Mohammed, Buddha, all set moral examples, and the Universe conferred that they become leaders, teachers, and, for some, saviors.

Now, back to disarmament. I have argued before that a moral example cannot be set by any nation who disarms out of fear or some other form of coercion.

Imagine if after Japan laid down their arms, we had laid down ours. War had left us weary and wiser. The Soviets did not yet have an atom bomb, as I recall. Had we disarmed at that point, might not the Soviets have disarmed, impressed by the moral example of our disarmament.

Worldwide, nations' leaders, and citizens, might well have stated: "We want to follow the moral example set by the United states."

For truly we would have been, and still are, the only ones capable of the moral act. Any other, even the Soviets, had they unilaterally disarmed, would have been said to have done so because they were afraid of our atom bomb. What's moral about that?

I saw a story the other day about a new missile China has developed. The balance of power may tip, I believe the person asserted.

We've lost our chance if that story proves to be true. Now it's only China who can do the moral thing and disarm as a model for the rest of the world to want to imitate.

And, Messy, as I see it, that's the only way out of the dilemma Smookler portrays in his "Parable of the Tribes" in which as soon as one of the inhabitants of this earth chooses to pursue power by war, no one can choose peace.

His example of the tribe who chooses to become like the nation who waged war, pretty much describes where we are today, given the warlike stance so many of us have taken.

Moral disarmament, there is no substitute!