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The obtuse and the opportunistic tribes concur on the demand that Saddam must start a war before we can attack him. Don't they see that he already has? This is a new world and a new kind of war which has no rules and no formulaic patterns, in which terrorists routinely target civilians. It is a greater threat to free and democratic societies than a set-piece invasion by massed armies.

It's not a "new world", it's a new America - one in which many conservatives have become so rabidly vicious that those who would start a war for personal gain have little trouble carrying out the bit of rhetorical akido necessary to bring it about.

True conservatives are as conservative, and thoughtful, about issues of life and death as they are about economics.

The United States made a serious blunder at the time - due largely to its reluctance to appear "imperialistic" - and it now intends to rectify it.

And we're going to rectify it ... by removing the tested and admitted nukes, just one presidential bullet away from falling to al-Qaida, of Pakistan? No.

By turning off the Saudi money spigot to al-Qaida? By quashing a government that funds suicide bombers openly and, unlike Hussein, fervently supports Islamicist fundamentalists? No.

By throwing everything against the weakest military power in the Middle East, where scores of thousands (only the zeroes are in dispute) have died from an embargo just as genocidal as the one that Ivan's country imposed on the Germans to force them to ratify Versailles? Where the U.S. civilian planners simultaneously say that it's an imminent threat to three continents, AND that it can be mopped up in a few weeks, in doublethink that would have made the Ingsoc Party in Nineteen Eighty-four proud? ... Yep.

One of the few things worse than Empire is stupidly conducted Empire. Because many more are going to die from it. Ivan could undoubtedly supply commentary and comparative examples, say, of the British imperial efforts from the 1820s to 1840s, as against that of the years immediately before World War I. I don't think he's inclined to do so, though. We've got, on this side of the Atlantic, not a Wellington and a Gladstone, but a pusillanimous, frightened (Lloyd) George.

"I plan to attack Israel, Cyprus, or wherever else I can reach with my armoury of ballistic missiles during the next 12 months. Failing that, I will at least equip as many freelance terrorists as I can find with the necessary hardware to do as much damage as possible," signed S. Hussein, in the presence of witnesses (see signatures below), dated September 10, 2001.

Now just where did that come from?

PING for a GREAT read.

Excerpt: "Let's leave the military aspects to one side for the moment - the tactical questions of Iraqi weapons and their possible uses are a matter for the defence experts. Let me deal here just with the moral arguments, which have filled columns of newspaper print and hours of broadcast airtime.

I have spent a good portion of the past 48 hours locked in televised confrontations with critics of the United States. The shrillness of their accusations seems to rise in direct proportion to their incoherence. Even by the usual standards of political doublethink, there is something very desperate and unscrupulous about this case which so ostentatiously claims the moral high ground. It is as if the anti-American reflex came first and the need to substantiate it followed as an afterthought."

Lost in all the debates and rhetoric is the simple fact that probably 99% of America is in favor of the U.S. crushing Iraq militarily.

The only real difference lies in those that want to attack Iraq before America is devastated by his weapons of mass destruction versus those that those that want to attack Iraq after America is devastated by his weapons of mass destruction.

Take your pick...

--Boot Hill