WILLIAM BURTON (whose permalinks aren’t working) has a message for the world:

Hi, World, how’s it going? Been a while. I know our current leader doesn’t call you much, but we really do like you. In fact, we’re a lot like you. Really. We’ve got Hindus, and Muslims, and Christians, and Jews, and people who believe in Body Thetans and the healing power of crystals. We’ve got Irish Buddhists, Japanese Baptists, and Jewish atheists who are trying to find a nice Jewish boy to settle down with. We’ve even got women who make a living travelling all over the place telling other women to stay home. All sorts of crazy shit. You’d love it over here. I know we told a lot of you to stay home, but you know we didn’t mean it. Ya’ll do most of the work around here anyway, except the stuff that involves typing (and that ain’t really work).

I know that some of the stuff we’ve been doing hasn’t been explained real well, so I thought I’d take a shot. Listen to me real good, now. We, the United States of America, don’t want to kill you or anyone else, nor do we want to piss you or anyone else off (well, maybe France). We’d prefer that everyone just keep sending us their smartest students and hardest workers while buying our soft drinks and watching our action movies. However, we are going to defend ourselves against attack and take steps to keep ourselves from being attacked. We also reserve the right to stick up for people who are getting slaughtered for no good reason at all. Don’t expect any different. Ever.

If we have to defend ourselves, people are going to die. Some of those people won’t deserve it. That’s just the nature of warfare. It’s real hard to sort the good guys from the bad guys when the bad guys are trying to keep from being sorted. So if we end up killing someone who didn’t deserve it or stationing troops near someone’s holy place, we’re genuinely not trying to be insensitive. We’re trying to do the best we can in an imperfect world. Believe me, we don’t like it when innocent people die. It’s not our nature.

You might mention to your leaders that you don’t want to get caught in any crossfire, so they need to make sure they don’t kill any Americans (’cause if they do kill any of us, there’s sure to be crossfire). If they seem intent on killing Americans anyway, you might try shooting your leaders in the head with an AK-47 or throwing them in prison. I know the Rumanians are awfully glad they shot theirs, and the Serbians don’t seem too upset that theirs are in jail. I know you don’t always have that option, and you may be stuck with the scumbags you’ve got. If so, our condolences. But your beef is with them, not with us.

There’s more.