Opposing viewpoints will be considered
And today, I'm Mr. Opposing Viewpoint. I'm not even sure I believe some of what I'm about to write, but my uncertainty won't stop me.

The world's most famous survivor of a motor-vehicle accident comes home to a hero's welcome in West-by-God-Virginia.
OK, let me start by saying this: Jessica Lynch was there and I wasn't. That makes her a tougher, stronger warrior than me. I readily concede that. But: Are we not a little quick with the hero label here? Best I can tell, her convoy took a wrong turn, they got attacked -- in the middle of a war, a place where it's not unreasonable to expect you might get attacked -- their vehicles all crashed into each other, some people died, and she was captured and left for dead in an Iraqi hospital. Some guy told our soldiers, "Hey, I think one of yours might be in that building," and they found the building, went in and got her. No enemy fire, no torture, no real resistance.

My cynicism may partially be fueled by the stories that came out immediately after her rescue -- that she fought to the death, that she got shot at, that she shot at her captors, etc., etc., etc., that we all just jumped on and believed because that's what people were telling us, despite the annoying little problem of the stories lacking any basis in truth. In the post-Wag the Dog era, it's not a far leap to believe that the producer really liked this story. Nice, gentle, young white woman from a small town, in the Army 'cause she wanted to save up a money so she could be a kindergarten teacher ... now, there's your hero.

The images I saw today of Miss Lynch suggest that she's a very, very nice person. She's a soldier, and a warrior, and she's tougher than me. Am not convinced that makes her a hero.

We say we shot Uday and Qusay
Of course, it's not exactly like these guys carry driver's licenses or anything. But U.S. Central Command is convinced that it saw the bodies of Saddam Hussein's sons. That should be good enough for me. For some reason, it isn't.

If indeed U.S. forces did kill these guys, fantastic. They're two people who really didn't need to be sharing a planet with you or me anymore. Their dad falls into that category, too.

I hope U.S. Central Command is right. I hope that we're not going to be funneling 30 million American big ones to kick-start some other Iraqi terrorist network that was willing to give up a couple of guys who didn't really deserve to live anyway. I hope.

While I'm at it ...
Just about the time we're all starting to get bored with the whole Iraq thing, about the time we're starting to become dismayed at the nightly report of some U.S. soldier dying in a guerrilla attack (never mind that news of those deaths always comes in right after 1 a.m. EDT, every night, right after our deadlines but no so late that we don't have to scramble to get the news in some editions) about the time all these idiots are wailing "Quagmire! Quagmire!" after 126 days, about the time the news about the war is turning solidly negative, is it just a wacky coincidence that Jessica Lynch makes a public appearance on the same day that we scratch Uday and Qusay off our scorecards?

She was NOT asking for it. Was she?
I really really really wasn't going to talk about the Kobe Bryant thing. I wish everyone else would stop, too.

But if it turns out he didn't assault this woman, I hope her life is ruined.

If it turns out he did assault this woman, her life is going to be ruined anyway.

And 100,000 more women who get raped in far worse situations than in the room of a $300-a-night hotel with a multi-millionaire athlete won't report it.

That will be the heart-wrenching tragedy in this case.