But American leftists have no problem holding everyone else -- the White House, Congress, the governments of the Coalition of the Willing, Sunni Iraqi guerrillas, Shi'i militias, international jihadists, the governments of Iraq's neighboring countries, etc. -- responsible for what they did and what they didn't do, leading to the catastrophe. It looks to me that it's a case of avoiding _only_ our own responsibility, or, if you don't like the word responsibility, denying where we stand in the causal relations that have led up to the present, as if we had nothing to do with it. IMHO, people will never trust those -- especially leftists! -- who fail to take responsibility. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>