Ordinarily I try to steer clear of rabid conservative columnist Kathleen Parker (how tidy does your worldview have to be to see the kind of straw men opponents she constantly picks fights with as the only barriers to global utopia?) But I think she makes an important point here (despite her smug rhetoric about how precise our troops have been). I never trust the media when they start quacking "quagmire" one week into any military conflict, as they've done since Vietnam.

Americans and Brits have secured strategic areas, including oil fields in the south and airstrips in the north; carefully minimized civilian casualties; fed and doctored surrendering Iraqis; uncovered a "torture hospital" and a terrorist camp packed with training equipment for nuclear, biological and chemical warfare; and encircled Baghdad in less than two weeks with less than 50 American casualties.

This is a failed plan?

Here in Chicago, hope tends to spring in April and collapse by mid-summer for the Cubs. So it was good to see new manager Dusty Baker get off to such a startling good start on Monday with a 15-2 romp of the Mets, the best Opening Day for the Cubs since 1899, if I heard the news right the other night.

Still, the outlook for this season includies too many question marks for Dusty Baker to go to his second straight World Series--read most of them in the opposing scout sidebar in the Cubs entry in Sports Illustrated's baseball preview. Or, as a Bay Area Cubs fan writes to the SF Chronicle:

The Cubs' Opening Day infield will consist of Mark Bellhorn, who's never played third base in his life; shortstop Alex Gonzales, who has less range than Bob Dylan; second baseman Mark Grudzielanek, who at 33 moves like his name weighs 10 pounds per letter; and 250-pound Korean rookie first baseman Hee Seop Choi. On artificial turf, this group is going to look like the freshman class at bullfighting school. Kerry Wood may become the first pitcher in history to request a trade to Colorado.

Sheesh, hard to believe they scored a run Monday, much less 15.

Get the latest from the Cub Reporter blogger, including a second-by-second countdown to the home opener at Wrigley Field.

China has threatened global health with its handling of the virus breakout, says the National Post.

Proud to be a Grand Rapidian: This report of hoop doings in my hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan made the Sports Illustrated daily e-mail newsletter last month:

Let's see. Jock, check. Uniform, check. Shoes, check. Stash ... hey! A
Michigan high school basketball player who dropped a small bag containing
marijuana on the gym floor during a tournament game has been expelled from
school. Ottawa Hills High School in Grand Rapids took the action Monday
after the student, an unidentified senior, admitted it was his marijuana
that turned up during Friday's Class A district boys championship game
between Ottawa Hills and Northview High, said Sue Krieger, a school district
spokeswoman. The marijuana was discovered after a first-quarter scuffle for
the ball. A photographer with The Grand Rapids Press alerted a referee to
what he thought was litter on the court. When it was found to a bag of
marijuana, police were called. District officials said they don't know why
the student had the marijuana, how it ended up under Northview's basket or
where the player was carrying it, since the uniforms have no pockets. The
incident marred a remarkable finish for Ottawa Hills, which recovered from a
0-6 start to advance to the championship game before its title dreams went
up smoke. Northview won 55-53.

• Etymology Today from M-W: roorback \ROOR-back\
: a defamatory falsehood published for political effect

If you think dirty politics are new, think again. In the midst of the 1844 presidential campaign between James K. Polk and Henry Clay, a letter was published in a newspaper in Ithaca, New York claiming that a reputable witness (one Baron von Roorback) had seen Polk purchase and brand 43 slaves. The letter caused an uproar that threatened to derail Polk's campaign until it was discovered that the whole thing was a hoax perpetrated by the opposing party — a 19th-century Watergate. Baron von Roorback didn't even exist. The incident proved a political boomerang; Polk won the election and the name "roorback" became a byword for political dirty tricks.

• Previous E.T.

My latest Tribune article: On baby boomers in career transition:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/classified/realestate/primetime...

• My Tribune archive

My latest B&C blog:
Monthly news-in-review; monthly book blog.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/books/features/weblog/030331.html

• My B&C blog archive

TIMELINE MARCH 2003 BONUS
Trimmed from the news-in-review:

U.S. nukes Florida
Life expectancy rises
Bombings in the Philippines and Israel
Cuban hijackers detained
Tractor standoff in D.C.
Mysterious illness spreads worldwide
Supreme Court upholds 3 strikes
Vatican weighs in against war on Ash Wednesday
More 'Millionaire' cheats, this time with pagers.
(From late Feb) Black twins born to white couple in mishap
Violence and charity on MardiGras.

More obits:
Bill Carlisle, Grand Ole Opry performer, 94
Judy Wilson, children’s book publisher
Robert Mitchell Hanna, urban spaces designer
Robert Leonard, founder of Ticketmaster

I filled out my NCAA brackets with scorn--how silly do you have to be to fill in your picks with any expectation that your forecast will resemble the crazy finishes and Cinderella teams that inevitably emerge once the ball is actually tipped?

Then I got excited as the first round fell into place approximately as I scribbled it would: I picked 13 seed Tulsa and 11 seed Central Michigan to win, and 11 seed Southern Illinois, which lost by a point. The only first round winners I missed were Butler, California, Missouri, Purdue, Oklahoma St., and Utah. My only Sweet 16 misses were Marquette, UConn, Butler, and Auburn. (Then it gets ugly--I got 5 of the Elite Eight, one of the Final Four, and o-fer from there on out.) This is disillusioning because I haven't followed college basketball as little as I did this year--not only that, but I had half as many wrong calls in the first round as a friend of mine who knows college hoops far better.

The unpredictability is one measure of the absurdity of NCAA pools. But so is the drama. We love buzzer beaters and the crazy hope that a sleeper school can put together a Final Four run. Without that guarantee of volatility, we wouldn't watch. So why exactly do we put our money on certainty?

Incidentally, now that the championship favorites have disappeared, I'm pulling for Kansas to win it all; Roy Williams is one of the best coaches, and best people, to have several championship-caliber teams over the last 15 years and no championships to show for it.

Latest B&C blog:
War reflections; Iraq digest.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/books/features/weblog/030324.html

• My B&C blog archive

With my plea yesterday for some healthy ambivalence in the blogosphere about the war in Iraq, I may have left my own views too vague. Here's my dilemma: Saddam Hussein is a curse to his country, and is screwing around with the U.N. now as surely as he's been screwing around with them for 12 years. What's the point of the U.N. going about its business, passing resolution after resolution, if Hussein keeps responding with occasional half-assed disarmament? However, it seems more likely than not that for whatever weapons Saddam has tried to hang onto, he is smart enough not to rock the boat beyond his borders (unlike North Korea, which has no regional counterbalancing force--Iraq is surrounded by them), and any intention of his to attack North America seems purely hypothetical.

This may not seem like an ideal time for the glib generalities of Maureen Dowd, but this observation sums up my feelings about how disproportionate the attack on Iraq is.

It still confuses many Americans that, in a world full of vicious slimeballs, we're about to bomb one that didn't attack us on 9/11 (like Osama); that isn't intercepting our planes (like North Korea); that isn't financing Al Qaeda (like Saudi Arabia); that isn't home to Osama and his lieutenants (like Pakistan); that isn't a host body for terrorists (like Iran, Lebanon and Syria).

What's worse, President Bush's dubious connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq seems downright manipulative. Saddam is not and won't soon be on Osama bin Laden's Christmas card list; the latter seems to regard the former as too establishment and secular for his tastes; the former regards the latter as too anarchist to be considered noble. Could followers of the two someday cross paths and make nice? Yes, but in the months or years until they do, we have North Korea pointing missiles at our ass. The logic of this Al Qaeda-Iraq connection is an interesting permutation of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" logic. In this case, the logic is, the enemy of my enemy's enemy is my enemy's friend. This is cause for war?