Lost luggage: Was I in Iraq this morning or not? As you may know, I am on my way to Afghanistan, with a 24-hour stop-over in the ultra-modern city of Dubai. So far, it looks a lot like Los Angeles. I am writing this from an internet cafe/bowling alley in a shopping center while eating sushi and Movenpick ice cream. The last 48 hours have been rough -- most of it spent on airplanes watching inflight movies. Emirates Air had a choice of 150 movies. I was in hog heaven. But as we flew over the former USSR, a handful of Central Asian Republics and the Caspian Sea, my thoughts turned to oil. Then, on our way to Dubai, there came a point in time when I realized that we could be over the airspace of Iraq. Then I KNOW we spent a long time in Iran's airspace. How bizarre. To think that commercial airliners are THAT above-it-all. At 30,000 feet, it doesn't really matter to anyone on our plane whether or not there's a war going on down below and people are getting blown up even as I watch Big Mama's House 2 and Memoirs of a Geisha and Failure to Launch.... PS: Somewhere between Delta and Emirates Air, my lugggage got lost. But E.A. gave me a free toothbrush.