Here's another case of "it's the principle of the matter," and for consumers in some circumstances, a likely lost rebate.

In trying to exercise my option to go to an HP website to redeem a rebate under the redemption offer form I'd accepted and made contractual at Circuit City, I was told by HP's rebate center managers that I did not have the right that my written receipt gave me. The form referred to an HP submission URL where I could supposedly submit the rebate electronically.

I was also told that the online submission is no faster than snail mail in getting one's rebate. However, my form said that submitting online would be faster, and that I could track the status of the claim.

HP's rebate center manager told me that I'd have to mail everything in, and an electronic submission was not an option. He said it was Circuit City's fault for printing out the option to submit electronically for my particular laptop rebate. I called Circuit City's rebate center whose representative told me that it was HP's rebate, so there was nothing Circuit City could do, other than perhaps at the store level. I was told by the store there was nothing they could do, then, that they'd give me a $50 rebate in the form of a gift card I'd have to spend there.

So the moral of the story, you would think, is: don't wait until the last minute deadline to submit a rebate submission. Is that really a moral? I thought the moral was: don't promise something to be available, go back on your promise, and then set up a gauntlet that steals hours of confused inquiry from consumers who made no mistakes.

If (A) you get anywhere close to the postmark deadline for rebate submission and happen not to have any one item asked for in the physical mail in rebate, lost the box, packed it into storage, or are too busy, and (B) you rely on the electronic submission option which represents itself as a faster method, you could lose the rebate you apparently never had if you relied on the electronic submission method to give you time.

Moral consistency in foreign policy dealings with a devil power is a Catch 22.

One one hand the devil threatens you with underhanded tactics. If you don't sink to its tactics, it guts you with them or begins the long, sadistic enterprise of putting a thousand cuts on you.

If you sink to deterrent tactics, dirt-fighting for dirt-fighting, the devil trumpets that you have succumbed to evil and are no different than itself so leave it alone to possess the places it has strong control over because you're no different than it. It whispers to the leaders of places you see possessed by it that you simply want to possess it too.

What is a superpower to do? Cast out the devil and its legions? Or obey its protestations and leave it alone? If you try the first, you do what Bono wrote / sang about: "become a monster so the monster will not break you." If you do the second, those ill-affected by the devil's nasty possession say you claim to be the world leader and aren't lifting a finger for freedom.

Recall the media stories exposing how the US left the Kurds high and dry so many times under Saddam, mixed with those showing the US record in dealing with Saddam in Cold War contexts. Being damned is damned easy it seems.

Beating the Catch 22 requires shifting premises to change the gameboard so that the good a good-aspiring nation does sticks, and evils aren't necessary.

Realists throw off the 'shackles' of moral consistency where it is deemed guilty of making the superpower the famed mental Hobgoblin. However, moral betrayals among nations build a fuel depot for future revenge wars and nasty little cuts undertaken under other pretexts.

Moral consistency must be the general rule in all US government dealings abroad not involving war so that moral leadership and credibility return to the status quo. For this, the US's political parties must seek the broadest consensus possible on what morality means in international conduct not involving war. Sounds simplistic I know, but it's back to the basics time, because we've lost moral and mission judgement precision.

At war, US dealings with the world should be consistently moral to the extent that the application of the moral does not destroy more life than breaching the moral. The answer to economic or even political competition in the world's not-so-democratic powers is not war in the name of 'vital interests' to stake ground and divvy zones of influence. It is to build and regenerate powerful economic competitiveness and living democracy at home that solves problems by example and makes other nations want that sort of system.

If we're talking about a life-killing tyranny mowing over economic and political power centers abroad to build a better killing machine, then stopping and divvying of zones of influence over resources under the tyrant's control is a life-saving enterprise. If not, the way to court democracy abroad is to see to it is beloved at home first. Make a skanky hypocritical mannequin of democracy at home, and people will march right into their local authoritarians' offices and beg for Orwell's hogs to consume them.

War is to save lives, ours and others so that we might live to compete another day in other arenas. Such arenas should not be those in which folks are dying for ephemeral wealth.