First we have this item:

FRANCE'S ANTI-AMERICAN HYSTERIA: A reader monitors the french evening news for me and sends in reports. His latest is the most disturbing yet:

Today's evening news broadcast on French ratings leader TF1, www.tf1.fr (streaming video at "News," under "Les JT a la carte"), finally has gone over the edge in directly supporting Saddam Hussein against the US and allied forces. Many, many of the stories center on civilian casualties and hardships. According to the leading story, the population of Baghdad no longer believes that the air attacks are meant to avoid civilians; the population of Basra is being actually targeted with "illegal" cluster bombs, shown in the video. (They looked like little canisters to me.) And the military situation isn't going any better for the Americans: Iraqis are proud that their army is matching up with the American forces, explains the broadcast. The video accompanying all this is filled with angry people on the street shouting in Arabic at the cameras, desperate people crowded around water and food distribution points, and sad wounded children in hospital beds. Story after story pounds these points home, repetitively, sickeningly, sadly. The strangest part of all this are the contradictions. The streets of Baghdad's government quarters are shown as a grey, deserted, and lined with bombed-out buildings; the residential quarters are shown teeming with people everywhere going about their daily business, most of them angry at the US, says the narration. As for the US army, it's practically losing the war - but Baghdad will be encircled within five or ten days.

De Villepin's awkwardness when asked whether he actually wants Saddam to be defeated was not misleading. We should realize that the French in their heads know we must win. But perhaps because of that, in their hearts, they want us to lose. They are not an ally.

Thursday you said: "I'm chagrined at my own optimism in this regard." Don't be. You're immersed in the war and you're going through the same changes as the soldiers. Everyone has to be optimistic at the outset. If a soldier ever saw a vision of what lay ahead of him, he'd never get off the boat. And then learn that war is not title bout that ends with a knockout or a bell at 15 rounds. It is an endurance contest in which the healthiest attitude is to prepare for everything but expect nothing. It ends when it ends. That's what Mr. Bush was trying to tell us this morning. If you have time, you might read Gleaves Whitney's piece in today's National Review Online. In his e-mail, Ms. Whitney's son in Kuwait writes: "Everyone finds ways to deal with the fear, pain, and suffering. I too have found a way. My life is not back in Michigan. It is here, now." I had that same moment during the 1968 Tet Offensive. My father described having it sometime after St. Lo, as he recovered from his wounds; my grandfather, somewhere on the Mexican border chasing Pancho Villa, with World War I still ahead of him. What counts is the moment: This is what happened today; these things are likely to happen tomorrow. (And if they don't happen, something else will.) That's not much of a philosophy to live by, but then war isn't life. Quite the opposite. Hope this helps.