<DIV> <DIV> <DIV>Chuck:</DIV> <DIV>The anti-US group has to get other states to sponsor their mission and<BR>that is a problem all its own. France, Russia, and Jordan would be<BR>ideal because they can not be challenged by the US with any<BR>creditability. All are former US allies in other contexts, plus France<BR>and Russia are permenant members of the Security Council. Of course<BR>France and Russia have had their own imperial designs on Iraq in the<BR>past, but most of that was not recent enough to matter. They are<BR>(would be) purely expediant token sponsors of the moment.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Me:</DIV> <DIV>I think the fact that Americans who get kidnapped in Iraq get beheaded and Russians who get kidnapped in Iraq eat with their captors and get apologized to says something:</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> <DIV class=textar align=left> <P class=textar align=left>According to Yevgeny Kozakov, from Rostov-on-Don, the Iraqis were sorry to see the Russians leave. "They would say, 'You Russians should stay here. Let's send home all the Americans, but you should stay,'" Kozakov said.</P></DIV> <DIV class=textar align=left> <P class=textar align=left>Other workers on the flight said they had simply come home at the end of their contracts, and said that the media were exaggerating the dangers.</P></DIV> <DIV class=textar align=left> <P class=textar align=left>Grigory Malinovsky, an engineer from Minsk who has been to Iraq twice, said he was not coming because the situation in Iraq was dangerous.</P></DIV> <DIV class=textar align=left> <P class=textar align=left>"We used to go out, even at nights," he said. "We would go to cafes. Here in Moscow, it is more dangerous than in Baghdad. Nobody asked us to show our passports there."</P> <P class=textar align=left><A href="http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2004/05/19/003.html">http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2004/05/19/003.html</A><BR> </P></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV><p> <hr size=1><font face=arial size=-1>Do you Yahoo!?<br><a href="http://pa.yahoo.com/*http://us.rd.yahoo.com/evt=24311/*http://promo.yahoo.com/sbc/">SBC Yahoo!</a> - Internet access at a great low price.