2003

Dr. David Livingstone, celebrated explorer and missionary to Africa, was once asked by a group back in England, "Have you found a good road to where you are? We want to send others to join you." "If you have men who will come only if they know there is a good road, I don't want them," he replied. "I want men who will come even if there is no road at all."

Out of the country since last fall, it's been an experience for me to return and see what's up here these days. Mad cow, West Nile, SARS. It's all so dizzying.

SANA'A, YEMEN ✦ Dohhh! Just when the Yankee cat turns its back to focus on Iraq, the Yemeni mice go out to play. A gang of al-Qaeda-type jailbirds, including two held as key suspects in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, have apparently vanished from a jail in Aden for good. Six weeks ago, they escaped in a style that outdid even the Great Escape from Alcatraz.

Just when the Yankee cat turns its back to focus on Iraq, the Yemeni mice go out to play. A gang of al-Qaeda-type jailbirds, including two held as key suspects in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, have apparently vanished from a jail in Aden for good.

Sunday is Mother's Day, and I'm reminded that I've never held my mother, looked into her eyes and told her that I love her. I've never offered a soft kiss on her cheek. I've never even given my mother flowers. My mom died before I got the chance.

One of the things I've discovered as a part-time resident of the Middle East is how easily things such as cultural nuances can hide in plain view.

Telling Lies in Iraq is my choice for the name of the flick we can only hope will be made about former Iraqi minister of misinformation Mohammed Saeed Sahaf. If it's anything like a satirical Web site on this new cult figure, a site that once had an incredible 4,000 hits per minute, this movie will be stunning.

Jean and I are packing to return to Hamilton to deliver our first child. And at the top of my to-do-in-Hamilton list, besides "get diapers for the bambino," is watch a big, fat movie. There's a single theatre here in Sana'a, a town of one million, but considering it's infested with rats or something similarly revolting, I've avoided it.

Trying to galvanize sagging troops, one of Saddam Hussein's last public pronouncements was recently to formally call for Muslims everywhere to join his ranks and fight Islamic jihad, or holy war. Should we care?

If truth is the first casualty of war, one has to wonder what that does in the socalled battle over hearts and minds of people, not only in Iraq, but across the Arab world and beyond.

Washington admits that it wants to shape the entire Middle East into a kinder place. Sooner or later, that goal may take the U.S. to Yemen's terrorist haven.

"We're going to err on the side of caution and stay in the house for a few days," is what I told a friend during a phone chat yesterday morning. Our self-imposed house arrest would mean Jean and I would miss a friend's birthday party and a weekly gathering of friends. Not much of a sacrifice, considering a few hours later four Yemeni protesters, including an 11-year-old boy, lay dead on the streets of this capital city. They were killed by Yemeni police guarding the American embassy.

If there is a time for everything -- a time to search and a time to give up, a time for love and a time for hate -- it would appear it's time for the Americans to blow Saddam and all that is his to Kingdom Come.

The Yanks' war plan sounds solid enough on paper. Capture land in Iraq quickly. Use it to set up bases for further attacks. Bomb Saddam's palaces and cut command centres from the rest of the country to quicken the government's collapse. Then make a seamless transition to military occupation. Don't get caught in ugly street fighting. Deliver food. Get Iraqis involved with a new economic plan. Unfurl the flag of democracy.

Listen to the words of a cargo handler at London's airport, spoken while he cleared freight I shipped to Yemen last year: "Those people are backwards and they don't want to change. As far as I'm concerned, I couldn't care less what happens to them."