Columnist Anne Lamott ponders a political Zen koan in Salon, December 18, 1998:

It's so confusing. I don't actually know what to think. I'm a Clinton supporter and I'm totally opposed to war. I love to see the consternation on the faces of the Republicans. It was such a brilliant coyote-trickster thing for Bill to do. It's fun to watch the Republicans' suppressed rage because they usually take so much pleasure in things militaristic. I know I don't believe in war; and that if this were a Republican who had behaved the same way Bill Clinton behaved I'd be up in arms. If it were Newt Gingrich or George Bush I'd be really sickened. And if it were George Bush or Newty Gingrich who had had his way with Monica Lewinsky and then gone to war the day before impeachment proceedings, I would take to the streets.

Saddam is heinous, like Richard Allen Davis, who killed Polly Klaas. You basically think they should be issued suicide tablets and coerced into taking them, although you don't actually support capital punishment. I feel the same way about Saddam as I do toward Davis. You don't get to sanction their murder, you don't get to take them out, but I tell you—the more I read about what UNSCOM knows about Iraq, then I really do think, Bomb! Bomb! Bomb! though at heart I'm really opposed to war. I find it all as confusing as s**t.

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