Wow, where to start. First off, the situation in Iraq seems to be rapidly spiraling out of control. The insurgency is escalating, the US military is being forced into a self-destructive offensive that will no doubt lead toward terrible Iraqi civilian deaths, and the country is becoming submerged into a civil war that will leave the country in ruin. Secondly, a new flag for the country was introduced to the Iraqis by the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council (IGC). However, the Iraqis didn't like it, to say the least, mostly because of the removal of the Islamic incantation "Allahu Akbar" ("God is Great"), and that the design of the flag very much resembled Israel's. So, in the midst of the criticism, the IGC redesigned it by making the blue slightly a darker shade; the "Allahu Akbar" is still gone, and so it still may not be accepted by the Iraqi people. Personally, I believe that there are parallels, some of them quite significant, between the war in Iraq and the Vietnam War. According to an article from the South Bend Tribune, some Vietnamese, in remembrance of the disastrous intervention in Indochina a generation ago, are calling for the US to get "out of Iraq before it's too late." Although we are told that Iraqi sovereignty will be "handed over" to the Iraqi people on June 30, we learn from an article by the BBC that the transitional government "will not have sovereign powers" until elections in January 2005. And, according to an al Jazeera poll, 87% of the over 20,000 polled believe that Iraq will remain occupied by the US after the June 30 deadline. And then, there is talk of renewing the draft, due to the fact that our troops are spread dangerously thin and that the administration had badly underestimated the number of troops needed to occupy Iraq in the first place. Well, it looks like that things are not going very well in the world, but I remain optimistic for humanity.