For people outside of this country, some of the politics and policies seem impossibly convoluted and contradictory. This piece will attempt to deconstruct the two headline grabbing stories of the moment: The presidential sex scandals and the pending war with Iraq.

Several of my colleagues in Europe have written me asking to explain why the Clinton sex scandal stories are important and if it is true that the president might loose his job over them. The alleged sex acts themselves are not especially important, most US Americans believe they in themselves do not influence the president's ability to do his job. Nor is the concern especially that the president has unacceptably low morals.

Besides the sensational value of reporting on the secret life of the countries chief executive, the stories would not be important except for one point. The claim is that the president or perhaps his chief of staff encouraged Ms. Lewinsky to lie about her affair with the president to a Grand Jury investigating another case. This is obstruction of justice - a serious felony offense in the US, were the president convict of this crime, he would likely be forced to leave his post.

But it is quite unlikely that this will actually happen for a number of reasons. The first is timing, this case against the president has been running for over three years, since his previous term and has covered a very broad range of topics, from law firm corruption, to a White House aid suicide to the current sex scandals. The Presidents defense team has a significant number of tools it can use to slow the process, including "executive privilege" which permits the president to block certain witnesses from testifying against him if they are within the executive branch of the government , as Ms. Lewinsky was.

Also, unlike in Europe, the US political system almost never removes presidents before their terms are complete. The are completely parallel election fundraising scandals in the US to the one that brought down the Klaus government. All was required in the US was for the president to apologize, give the money back and promise to pass legislation which would make this kind of thing not happen again (the legislation is unlikely to ever materialize). In part this is due to the difference between the European parliamentary system, which has a formalized vote of "no confidence" and mixed party executive branches and the US fixed term length system, long campaign and single party executive branch.

When Ronald Reagan was caught in 1986 of funding an illegal war effort in Nicaragua with money which it had received from the illegal sale of arms to Iran, the presidency was never really threatened - in part because of Reagan's popularity. Currently, Clinton is as popular as Ronald Reagan and thus the political will needed to really bring impeachment charges is completely absent in Washington.

Does this mean the justice system is run on popularity polls? No, but it means that the system which is designed to protect those in power will slow the process down so much that it unlikely that there will be an indictment before his term ends. Then Clinton will be pardoned by who ever is the next president, even if they are from the opposing party (as Richard Nixon was pardoned of much greater crimes after he resigned). This may not solve all of the Presidents problems because he can not be pardoned from the civil suit that has been brought against him by Paula Jones. But this case appears to be unraveling.

While it is true that recently US Americans are much more worried about the extra-marital sexual relationships of their leaders than their European counterparts. It should also be pointed out that the significant majority of US Americans believe that there has been too much reporting of these sex scandals.

Far more significant is the pending attack by the US on Iraq. It is quite likely that by the time this story goes to print the US will have already launched an air assault on numerous targets inside of Iraq. Yesterday a team of top presidential advisors gave a public hearing to the questions and concerns of a small sample of the US population. The event was carried out in a large stadium in a fairly conservative state in the US (Ohio)- but the cabinet officials were surprised by how much opposition there was to the US policy.

The division on the war is not limited to the US. While CNN claims "16 countries offer U.S. support on Iraq" - including the Czech Republic (Supports military strike as last resort and offering logistical and land mine experts.) Several of the key allies the US depended on during the first Gulf War are opposing US military action in the region, specifically Russia, China and Saudi Arabia.

What most European do not understand about current US American politics is that they are far more opinion poll oriented than other countries. The Washington Post runs continuous polls on the Presidents approval rating. And has recently started running polls on the popularity of the attack on Iraq. 55% support bombing Iraq if they continue to interfere with UN weapons inspections (33% opposed, the rest are not sure). More interesting is that 56% of the US public believe the US should attempt to force Saddam Hussein from power (40% feel this is not the right role of our government). So much for national sovereignty.

It is hard to explain to persons who have not lived here hope important these numerics are. Perhaps more than any other country the US has attempted to quantify political decision making. It is a calculus which is likely to cost tens to hundreds of thousands of lives in the next days.