Today's front page of the NYT which blares -"Japan's Troops Proceed in Iraq Without Shot Fired." Why denigrate an ally which help US troops in their support of the new Iraq? Because, according to the NYT, they are in Iraq in part to provide not the United States but"the Bush administration with diplomatic support." Do note, for the NYT it is not these are not US allies merely Bush administration ones.

This continues the message sent by John Kerry during the debate - You are either for the Bush administration or against it. How else can one explain the pointed Kerry dismissal of Poland? The result - the Polish government expressed its outrage and then moved to hedge its bet by announcing that it will leave Iraq at the end of 2005 when the UN mandate for the coalition expires (if it is renewed they can stay, of course).

How can such a position do anything but undermine the American troops fighting and dying in Iraq? And, yes, I have friends serving there and sons of friends about to join them and I worry about them constantly.