Atlantic -- In the Name of God by Jack Beatty

If Saddam possesses usable weapons of mass destruction and if, to take a scenario George W. Bush takes seriously, he builds a fleet of pilotless drones and if he somehow gets them out of Iraq and if he builds or hires ships and launches his drones from them and if he has found a way to make the drones spread weapons of mass destruction and if it is not a windy day and if our Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, CIA, and DIA are as asleep as they were on September 11, then Saddam will attack us. Alternatively, Mr. Bush warned in the State of the Union address, "Secretly, and without fingerprints, he could provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists, or help them develop their own." Italics mine.

Had preventive war been U.S. policy in 1941, Dick Cheney told a veteran's group, we could have pulled a Pearl Harbor on the Japanese. [Is this America?]

"Power," the moral realist John Adams warned the idealist Thomas Jefferson, in words he could have addressed to George W. Bush, "always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak; and that it is doing God's service when it is violating all His laws.

The "moral clarity" Bush's publicists salute him for gives fearful permissions. Against evil, all means are sanctified.

His - The Road Better Not Taken insightfully warned last week that a war against Iraq could be the most catastrophic blunder in U.S. history

U.S. troops are planned to remain in Iraq for years, targets of terrorist attack and proof of "U.S. imperialism." The supporters who claim it will spread "democracy" will be swamped by those in the region who see "imperialism."

"I doubt you could find one person who would agree that the Americans are coming just for the sake of the region and they want to bring democracy," Khaled M. Batarfi, a Saudi Arabian newspaper editor, told The New York Times last week. "We think it's oil. We think it's Israel. We think it's control. They want a police station in Baghdad like they have in Kabul."

Of course, they are used to the rhetoric that cloaks imperialism. Iraq itself is an artificial state the British created to serve their interests.

Atlantic, always a smart magazine, ten years ago had Bernard Lewis exploring the relationship between democracy and Islam, not promising. We have not asked for democracy in Kuwait as Bush I promised 12 years ago because the popular parties are fundamentalist, anti-Israeli and anti-U.S..