If you want to see how cynical President Bush (news - web sites)'s growing legion of critics are about the Administration's Iraq (news - web sites) policy, take a gander sometime at the electronic newsletter sent out by Chuck Spinney, a retired Pentagon (news - web sites) analyst. He starts out with a quote from the late journalist H. L. Mencken: "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed
by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
<snip>
APOCALYPTIC RHETORIC. Spinney's perspective is clear, if a bit overstated. Still, even if you don't share this malevolent view of what the Administration has done, you have to wonder if Bush's notion of preventive warfare matches the real risks the nation faces post-September 11. More and more, I fear Team Bush needlessly challenges the 350-year-old foundations of international order.
<snip>
Without the imminent threat of biological and nuclear weapons in Iraq ever having been truly established after the U.S. invasion, the Administration is still trying to justify the military action by linking it to the war on terrorism. Fighting terrorism, however, has nothing to do with invading another country. It involves a broad campaign to get countries to cooperate on intelligence and law enforcement, and to crack down on the financing of terrorist organizations.
And which institution, less than a month after September 11, set up a mechanism for monitoring cooperation with these efforts and insisted it's the obligation of all countries to root out terrorism? The U.N.
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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=66&e=7&u=/bw/nf200310221599db056
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