In response to Toby's comment about Arafat, John snipes, "And my heavens, isn't that paying bloody dividends!" Toby: "It wasn't worth trying?" John: "You're making the mistake of youth." Toby: "The President's not a kid." John: "Your country is. You're involving yourself in a centuries-old conflict without sufficient regard for history. Listen to the warning of old friends. It was Kipling who warned to expect 'the blame of those ye better, and the hate of those ye guard.'" Toby: "And wasn't it James Joyce who said, 'History is a nightmare from which I'm trying to awake'?" Much like me and these storylines. Marbury thinks and serves up: "Yes, but it was your own great Irish master, Eugene O'Neill, who said, 'There is no present or future, only the past happening over and over again -- now.'" And how. I'm with O'Neill. Toby asks, "You're saying we should butt out of Ireland until we know what we're doing?" Marbury: "I'm saying Brendan McGann cannot come to the White House." Toby sighs and says, "Speaking of dead Irish writers...." (Well, Joyce, anyway, since Kipling was born in Bombay -- under British rule -- and lived in Britain.) Marbury: "Yes, another drink." 'Cause, you know, that's how those Irish writers end up dead; they drink themselves into the grave. I can't imagine how tiresome I would find it to be Irish and to have my nationality so insistently linked in the minds of North Americans with nothing but alcohol and terrorism. Oh yeah, and leprechauns. (Well, actually, given my experiences in the Muslim community, maybe I do have a wee inkling.)