Obviously there's been a lot of soul-searching being done by Democrats during the last two days. How can such a large part of America unite specifically to oppose the rights of homosexuals? Why do so many people want to enshrine prejudice in the Constitution? Do we need to change strategies, or principles, or both?

Well, Catherine, Charles and I have been caucusing/watching TV, and we're pretty sure we have the answer. It's clear that America is not ready for gay marriage. That's unfortunate... but frankly, it's understandable. What do you think of when you hear "gay marriage"? Andrew Sullivan? Andrew Sullivan naked? It doesn't take the additional threat of eternal hellfire to convince people that constitutional protections from this might be a good idea.

So let's change gears. Gay marriage is clearly a losing issue. Lesbian marriage, on the other hand, is totally hot. Shift the vocabulary, change the spokespeople, and start working anecdotes about slumber parties into speeches. Oh, and Charles suggests that mandating cheerleader outfits for the ceremonies might help provide an all-American, heartland-friendly image.

Soldiers Describe Looting of Explosives

WASHINGTON — In the weeks after the fall of Baghdad, Iraqi looters loaded powerful explosives into pickup trucks and drove the material away from the Al Qaqaa ammunition site, according to a group of U.S. Army reservists and National Guardsmen who said they witnessed the looting.

The soldiers said about a dozen U.S. troops guarding the sprawling facility could not prevent the theft because they were outnumbered by looters. Soldiers with one unit — the 317th Support Center based in Wiesbaden, Germany — said they sent a message to commanders in Baghdad requesting help to secure the site but received no reply.

The witnesses' accounts of the looting, the first provided by U.S. soldiers, support claims that the American military failed to safeguard the munitions. Last month, the International Atomic Energy Agency — the U.N. nuclear watchdog — and the interim Iraqi government reported that about 380 tons of high-grade explosives had been taken from the Al Qaqaa facility after the fall of Baghdad on April 9, 2003. The explosives are powerful enough to detonate a nuclear weapon.

During the last week, when revelations of the missing explosives became an issue in the presidential campaign, the Bush administration suggested that the munitions could have been carted off by Saddam Hussein's forces before the war began. Pentagon officials later said that U.S. troops systematically destroyed hundreds of tons of explosives at Al Qaqaa after Baghdad fell.

Asked about the soldiers' accounts, Pentagon spokeswoman Rose-Ann Lynch said Wednesday, "We take the report of missing munitions very seriously. And we are looking into the facts and circumstances of this incident."

The soldiers, who belong to two different units, described how Iraqis plundered explosives from unsecured bunkers before driving off in Toyota trucks.

The U.S. troops said there was little they could do to prevent looting of the ammunition site, 30 miles south of Baghdad.

"We were running from one side of the compound to the other side, trying to kick people out," said one senior noncommissioned officer who was at the site in late April 2003.

"On our last day there, there were at least 100 vehicles waiting at the site for us to leave" so looters could come in and take munitions.

"It was complete chaos. It was looting like L.A. during the Rodney King riots," another officer said.

He and other soldiers who spoke to The Times asked not to be named, saying they feared retaliation from the Pentagon.

however, these soldiers are probably planted operatives of the liberal media, so take this info with a grain of salt. a spoonful of salt, if you will.

jesus. this article is too gratingly pretentious even for me, an unrepetent elitist europhile.

Dr. Joseph, a bearded, broad-shouldered man with silken gray hair, was sharing coffee and cigarettes with his fellow dog walker, Roberta Kimmel Cohn, at an outdoor table outside the hole-in-the-wall Breadsoul Cafe near Lincoln Center. The site was almost a cliché corner of cosmopolitan Manhattan, with a newsstand next door selling French and Italian newspapers and, a bit farther down, the Lincoln Plaza theater showing foreign movies.

"I'm saddened by what I feel is the obtuseness and shortsightedness of a good part of the country - the heartland," Dr. Joseph said. "This kind of redneck, shoot-from-the-hip mentality and a very concrete interpretation of religion is prevalent in Bush country - in the heartland."

"New Yorkers are more sophisticated and at a level of consciousness where we realize we have to think of globalization, of one mankind, that what's going to injure masses of people is not good for us," he said.

His friend, Ms. Cohn, a native of Wisconsin who deals in art, contended that New Yorkers were not as fooled by Mr. Bush's statements as other Americans might be. "New Yorkers are savvy," she said. "We have street smarts. Whereas people in the Midwest are more influenced by what their friends say."

"They're very 1950's," she said of Midwesterners. "When I go back there, I feel I'm in a time warp."

The pair then adjusted their berets, hopped on their vespas, and shouted, "Au revoir, fuckers!" as they roared off to see a screening of " L'Anee' Derniere a Marienbad."

guys, c'mon. of course we're better than them, but we have to at least pretend like we're all equal.

seems like calling conservatives asswipes, blaming those durn homosexuals for our electorla loss and having me get homicidally angry about my support of the troops brings in record numbers of viewers! yesterday was our first day here at zunta with 200+ visitors (or 500+ visitors, depending on which counter i'm using. they're wacky.). we're obviously on a meteoric rise to blogfame.