[From country to country].

ast week, I watched ''Wag the Dog,'' the 1997 Barry Levinson film about a Hollywood producer who is hired to create a television war to cover up a domestic crisis. The first call he makes is to a character played by Willie Nelson. Every war needs a theme song after all, even a fake war, and so Willie flies out to California and walks around the swimming pool, strumming his guitar and riffing on words like ''America'' and ''proud'' and ''free.''