rpses, Iraqi and American. It was a further curious demonstration of the power of illusion that bin Laden himself slipped through the administration's fingers, as if the actual villain of September 11 had been dissolved in the fantasy his act set in motion.
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Each country that plunges into nightmare -- whether Germany under Hitler, the Soviet Union under the Bolsheviks, Chile under Pinochet, or, for that matter, Iraq under Saddam Hussein -- travels there along its own path.  The American political sy