The campaign to kill [Saddam Hussein], frankly admitted and discussed by high officials in the White House, Defense Department and Central Intelligence Agency, has committed the United States for the first time to public, personalized, open-ended warfare in the classic mode of Middle Eastern violence — an eye for an eye, a life for a life.

--Thomas Powers in the Week in Review in today’s New York Times

What is Powers talking about? What life? What eye? Saddam didn’t kill Bush and didn’t succeed in killing his father. And let’s hope Powers doesn’t think that the death of Saddam would be vengeance for the loss of life on 9/11. So is it the deaths of American troops Powers thinks the U.S. wants to avenge? If so, haven’t we killed several thousand Iraqi soldiers?