Jason, You have said that Twain supported "liberating Cuba." That is, in fact, an excellent example of Twain being misled by wartime propaganda. He recognized that and reversed his position to become one of the earliest critics of the protectorate established over Cuba by the United States (its "independence" was severely limited by the Platt Amendment). In "The Stupendous Procession," an article he was writing in February of 1901, the month the restrictions on Cuban independence were proposed, Twain portrayed the U.S. Congress as poised to bind Cuba with a new set of handcuffs and leg-irons. A year later, contrasting the influence of training in the nation's old democratic and new imperial ideals, he wrote in "As Regards Patriotism": "Training made us nobly anxious to free Cuba; training made us give her a noble promise [of independence]; training has enabled us to take it back." Using Cuba as an example of "liberation" that Twain supported only highlights the danger of believing wartime propaganda. As Twain pointed out, Cuba was not "liberated," and the war had many other consequences that were not expressed up-front that he vehemently opposed. You can support the current war all you want, but pointing to Twain's position on Cuba undermines your arguments. If anyone looks up "As Regards Patriotism" and doesn't find that passage, you'll need to read the text as it appeared in Frederick Anderson's _A Pen Warmed-up In Hell: Mark Twain in Protest_, Louis Budd's _Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches and Essays_, or my anthology of his writings on the Philippine-American War (and probably some other recent anthologies). Albert Bigelow Paine censored that essay before publishing it in _Europe and Elsewhere_, and the censored text was later reprinted in numerous other anthologies before the full text was first published in Anderson's volume. Jim Zwick