If this be "Indian Country," then they be the Pony Express

■"Truckers of Iraq's Pony Express Are Risking It All for a Paycheck," by James Glanz, New York Times, 27 September 2004, p. A1.

The wild west metaphors Robert Kaplan likes to employ are extended by this piece. Why do people engage in this dangerous sort of activity? Same reason why men take dangerous jobs all over the worldóit's the money. Shrinking the Gap will always be about the money, and there's nothing wrong with that. That's what's settled the Bad Lands all over the Core; it will be the same in the Gap.

But the story also gives you a sense of the fragile connectivity that exists now between Iraq and the outside world: it takes truck drivers willing to be shot atóor far worse if they're captured alive.