Today, postindustrial America is planning to fight its latest war with highly skilled professional soldiers and sophisticated high-tech machines. We need fewer people\ufffdand can expect far fewer casualties\ufffdto win quicker victories. Critics who look back at World War II with nostalgia and argue for shared sacrifice and a drafted military miss the point. We are no longer the kind of country that fights most effectively that way.

I'm sending my babies into harm's way over there. They won't all make it back in one piece. Oh, and we're sending soldiers, too. (Still haven't completely obsoleted those, but we're making steady progress on it.)

Global hegemony begins in the lab. [cue thunder, lightning and manic laughter]

Of course, Iraq wants to be treated like North Korea. That's why Iraq is pursuing weapons of mass destruction. And that's why the Bush administration wants to keep that from happening. The whole rationale for stopping Saddam now is that the price might be too high to stop him later, like it already is with North Korea.

This project is in the hands of a special multinational task force made up of special elite units and armed with combat helicopters and aircraft, spy-planes and satellites. Unlike the Blix outfit, which is based in Baghdad, the alternative investigators are fanned out across the country. One well-placed source disclosed: \ufffdOur men in the field know where 90 percent of Saddam\ufffds missiles and unconventional weapons systems are located, even the mobile ones that are moved from place to place every hour. We are keeping them under tight, on-site observation because when the war begins we want to be there before Saddam orders his men to hit the triggers.\ufffd