Several possible root causes have been identified, including, among others, poverty, lack of education, abrogation of human rights, the perception that the enemy is weak-willed. I've been interviewing terrorists around the world over the past five years. Those I interviewed cite many reasons for choosing a life of holy war, and I came to despair of identifying a single root cause of terrorism. But the variable that came up most frequently was not poverty or human-rights abuses, but perceived humiliation. Humiliation emerged at every level of the terrorist groups I studied — leaders and followers.

The "New World Order" is a source of humiliation for Muslims. And for the youth of Islam, it is better to carry arms and defend their religion with pride and dignity than to submit to this humiliation. Part of the mission of jihad is to restore Muslims' pride in the face of humiliation. Violence, in other words, restores the dignity of humiliated youth. Its target audience is not necessarily the victims and their sympathizers, but the perpetrators and their sympathizers. Violence is a way to strengthen support for the organization and the movement it represents.

BAGHDAD (Plausible News Service) -- The apparent arrest of Saddam Hussein brought a traumatic chapter in the millennia-long history of Mesopotamia to an end earlier today, with immediate and wide-ranging effects being felt throughout the country. Flowers spontaneously erupted across vast stretches of Iraqi desert. Power and water service were restored to millions of Iraqi homes, some of which have never had it in the first place.

"My cable is working again! I can get Bravo channel now! They must have arrested Saddam!" cried a jubilant Walid al-Jibra, dancing in the street in front of his formerly bombed-out store, which was found miraculously restored moments after the announcement. Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis alike were seen joyfully embracing in Basra, while a number of children previously thought to have been killed during the invasion were found to be alive and perfectly healthy. Hospitals reported increases in stocks of medicines, "but hey, we don't need them anyway, half our patients just got up and walked away," according to one staffer.

A statement released by al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden acknowledged the defeat for the radical Islamic movement signified by the Saddam arrest.

"Oh well, we might as well just hang it up, as you say," said the emaciated terrorist leader on a video broadcast by al-Jazeera television shortly after the arrest announcement. "This just shows that you can't mess around with the ol' US of A."

Troops met the news with relief. "Well, I am sure enough glad that's all over with," said Sgt. Paul Tarbabe of Tuskeegee, as he began packing his gear for the return home. "Just in time, too -- we oughta all be able to get back home for Christmas now. I've got a six-month-old daughter to meet!"

Donald Rumsfeld and senior Pentagon officials have indicated that with Saddam out of the picture, "our work here is finished," as Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told a press briefing at the Pentagon early this morning. Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and other officials, for whom the planning and execution of the Iraq operation has been an obsession for years, intend to retire next week and "set up a think tank in Samoa or someplace like that," Wolfowitz said.

The forecast for Baghdad for today and the foreseeable future is sunny, with bright blue skies, a few fluffy white clouds, warm but comfortable temperatures, and copious birdsong.

"No one inside Iraq is for war (note I said war not a change of regime), no human being in his right mind will ask you to give him the beating of his life, unless you are a member of fight club that is, and if you do hear Iraqi (in Iraq, not expat) saying 'come on bomb us' it is the exasperation and 10 years of sanctions and hardship talking. There is no person inside Iraq (and this is a bold, blinking and underlined inside) who will be jumping up and down asking for the bombs to drop. We are not suicidal you know, not all of us in any case.

I think that the coming war is not justified (and it is very near now, we hear the war drums loud and clear if you don’t then take those earplugs off!). The excuses for it have been stretched to their limits they will almost snap. A decision has been made sometime ago that 'regime change' in Baghdad is needed and excuses for the forceful change have to be made. I do think war could have been avoided, not by running back and forth the last two months, that’s silly. But the whole issue of Iraq should have been dealt with differently since the first day after GW I.

The entities that call themselves 'the international community' should have assumed their responsibilities a long time ago, should have thought about what the sanctions they have imposed really meant, should have looked at reports about weapons and human rights abuses a long time before having them thrown in their faces as excuses for war five minutes before midnight.

What is bringing on this rant is the question that has been bugging for days now: how could 'support democracy in Iraq' become to mean 'bomb the hell out of Iraq'? why did it end up that democracy won’t happen unless we go thru war? Nobody minded an un-democratic Iraq for a very long time, now people have decided to bomb us to democracy? Well, thank you! how thoughtful."