I can't help it, I have to vent my replies to Andy Rooney's October 12th commentary.

You might not think so from listening to me, but I like to be liked. Not only that, I like my country to be liked around the world and it isn't. I wish President Bush would try to make this country less hated. He could do it if he set his mind to it.

He is doing it--you just didn't notice. If we're so hated, why are so many millions of people so desperate to enter, stay, and become American citizens?

To begin with, we should change our attitude toward the United Nations. There has to be some power in the world superior to our own - for our own sake. Iraq isn't our problem. It's the world's problem.

Not any more. Iraq was a problem, but now it's an opportunity--ours and the world's. An incredible opportunity, in fact: Iraq is now on its way to becoming a free-trading, open democracy with an educated, diverse population sharing oil revenues among all its citizens and grateful to the US for its liberation.

When the president spoke at the United Nations, he came off as arrogant and it made all of us seem arrogant. We are a little arrogant, of course, and we ought to watch that.

Did you have those translation headphones on? Maybe the time delay threw you off. The arrogance I saw and heard at the UN came from Kofi Annan and Jacques Chirac. But if you're right, maybe the solution is to stop going there. In fact, maybe the UN would be better off moving to Geneva, Bruges or Paris.

The United States can't force its ideas on the whole world.

You're right, ideas like freedom, democracy, human rights, and pluralism can't be forced. The best we can do is prevent their suppression by tyranny.

We have great military power and a store of nuclear and biological weapons that would send us running to the U.N. for help if any other country had as many.

Other countries have had as many or more, and the UN was no help. In fact, believe it or not, our having them kept others from using theirs.

The dialogue continues....

The trouble with our weapons is they don't work against one terrorist with a jar of anthrax or a religious nut with a truckload of dynamite. We're wasting our money on weapons we can't use.

Wait--you really want to use these weapons? So far, just having them was worth the cost. But please don't be so quick to use them.

It doesn't matter what I think, but I think like millions of Americans and they do matter.

Let's read that again, Andy, a couple times. OK, you're right: they do matter. But what they think (right or wrong) doesn't. That's why we elect leaders.

I was opposed to going into Iraq without the approval of the U.N. Things went well at first and I decided I was wrong and apologized. Now I want to apologize again. I want to apologize for apologizing.

Andy, are you working for Wesley Clark?

We should not have attacked Iraq without the OK of the United Nations. It wasn't all President Bush's fault. U.N. delegates were infuriating - sitting on their hands. It's an ineffective, namby-pamby organization. The French and the Germans were against attacking Iraq because they do a lot of business there.

The UN didn't just sit on its hands--it profited from supporting a tyrant with its Oil For Palaces program.

The president made the mistake though of deciding to attack anyway and now we have to live with that mistake. We're living with it and too many of our guys are dying with it.

Thousands of Iraqis are grateful they can live at all thanks to that "mistake." Many of our guys have died, but nowhere near as many as would die in the next 9/11.

I hope we remain the strongest country in the world but it isn't a sure thing that we'll always be what we are today. Look what's happened to Great Britain, France, and Germany. They aren't what they were. Things change in the world. It could happen to us - may be happening. It happened to the great Greek and Roman civilizations. They didn't disappear because there was anything wrong with the ideals on which those civilizations were based. They disappeared because there got to be fewer and fewer Greeks and Romans who believed in those ideals, and they were taken over by people who didn't believe in them at all.

Like the UN? They certainly don't believe in them. Do you? Listen to yourself: all you want is for us to be liked, but the world hates us, we're arrogant, we shouldn't force our ideas on the world, and the UN should take over approval of our military operations. So what ideals do you believe, Andy?

We've got some people who don't believe in our American ideals -- so watch out.

I'm watching. I watched you, didn't I?