In the ensuing months, his analysis of the war and its combatants has been thoroughly shot through with distortion, exaggeration and lies. He went in convinced that a bombing campaign in Afghanistan would accomplish nothing, and he has since clung to that assumption and rejected any and all evidence to the contrary. He believes American military power cannot be used toward humanitarian ends, period. And he goes to great lengths to maintain faith in that belief.

Since 9-11 print and broadcast media in the United States have disseminated the Bush Administration line without question. On no subject has that been truer than on plans to run a pipeline across Afghanistan. Yet the role of energy resources in the U.S. "war on terror" has been anything but unreported. In Europe, mainstream media outlets like Reuters and the BBC have reported extensively on the subject. Wire services have distributed hard news about U.S.-led meetings, bank funding and related issues to every American newspaper, radio and television station in the United States.

American media has uniformly chosen to ignore these wire dispatches. Perhaps editors feel that their readers and viewers aren't ready to hear unpleasant truths about their government's actions in the aftermath of the 9-11 attacks. Perhaps they hope that other media--some other media, somewhere--will begin the coverage that would allow them to pick up the ball. Whatever the reason for the silence of the American media, it has contributed to the sense that those who mention oil, natural gas and Afghanistan in the same breath are "conspiracy theorists" on the political fringe.

Historically, it's no secret that war almost always goes hand in hand with economic motives, and economic incentives for American involvement often involves control of fossil fuels. U.S. intervention in Somalia, for instance, had less to do with feeding hungry Africans than controlling the strategic Gulf of Aden, through which oil tankers pass from the Indian Ocean en route to the Suez Canal via the Red Sea. While the Vietnam conflict is popularly believed to have stemmed from the Cold War-era "domino theory" obsession among U.S. officials, energy company interest in South Vietnamese natural gas reserves played at least as vital a role in American military intervention as anti-Communist ideology. And few doubt a relationship between the importance of Venezuela as the biggest producer of oil in the Western hemisphere and a botched Bush Administration coup attempt against its democratically-elected president, Hugo Chàvez. Given the enormous energy resources at stake in Central Asia, these cynics suggested, there was much more to American adventurism in Afghanistan than immediately met the eye.

The people of Afghanistan don't speak as one voice. Certainly some people are pleased--the bandits, robbers and rapists are having a field day. The Taliban were despicable, but the Northern Alliance turned out to be nothing more than the Taliban minus law and order--same stonings, burqas, women unable to go to school (due to lack of money since it was never against the law). Anyone who thinks Afghans are better off since the bombing campaign--with its countless deaths, carpet-bombing and massive increase in refugees--is a self-deluded fool. If Afghanistan is ever rebuilt, it will be despite, not because of, the U.S.

Originally posted by Bill Hicks:
You're telling me that the photographs of people dancing in the streets, women returning to work burqa-free, and the resumption of soccer matches were all fabricated?

Ted Rall's response:
Just like most of the war coverage, yes. For instance, the Northern Alliance charged $500 per artillery shell firing so that cameras would have something to show on the air each night--never mind that they were firing in empty fields. Women in Kabul are 99.999999% burquaed; outside of Kabul it's 100%. Yes, soccer has resumed. If soccer is liberation, all hail liberated Afghanistan under former Taliban Hamid Karzai!

No judicial nominee could be confirmed today if he or she attacked Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 ruling striking down racial segregation in schools.

...

The Senate must also be highly skeptical of nominees who do not acknowledge a woman's right to abortion. Mr. McConnell has not merely expressed abstract reservations about the Roe v. Wade ruling, but has also actively crusaded against it. He signed a statement arguing that fetuses deserved constitutional protection. Mr. McConnell has promised to follow established precedents in the area, and that is worth something. But that will not help in the many cases appellate courts decide in which there is no binding authority and a judge must seek his own counsel.

As a U.S. senator, Mr. Gore backed the resolution to go to war with Iraq in 1991, and he later chastised President George H. W. Bush for leaving Saddam Hussein in power. As vice president in 1998, Al Gore supported--and President Bill Clinton signed--the Iraq Liberation Act, calling for the removal of Hussein. As a candidate for president in 2000, Mr. Gore said, "We have made it clear that it is our policy to see Saddam Hussein gone." He then concluded his remarks on Iraq with this bold statement: "And if entrusted with the presidency, my resolve will never waver."

...the administration has not made a convincing case that we face such an imminent threat to our national security that a unilateral, preemptive American strike and an immediate war are necessary.

After the massacres at a Pakistani Christian school and hospital in August, Reuters headlined its story "Pakistan attack seen aimed at West, not Christians," while the BBC said: "The attack appears aimed at Western interests, rather than Pakistan's Christian minority." The Associated Press argued that the assaults were "directed against western interests."

The people believed to be behind the attacks, though, have made their motives plain. Members of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, the terrorist group claiming responsibility for an October 2001 massacre in a Christian church, said that "they planned to kill Christians" in revenge for Muslim deaths in Afghanistan. The men who claimed responsibility for attacking the school in August announced that they "killed the nonbelievers."

The tone of the speech is best reflected in Gore's contemptuous dismissal of the U.S. victory in Afghanistan as "defeating a fifth-rate military power." If the Taliban were a fifth-rate military power, why didn't the Clinton-Gore administration destroy it and spare us Sept. 11?

It is not as if, during Gore's term, al Qaeda had not declared itself or established its postal address. It declared war on the United States, blew up our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and attacked the USS Cole. What did Gore's administration do? Fire a few missiles into the Afghan desert and a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory, then wash its hands and leave the problem to its successors.

Why didn't the Clinton-Gore administration go after this fifth-rate military power? This is a question that even Russian President Vladimir Putin has asked. In an interview with the German newspaper Bild shortly after Sept. 11, Putin recounted having talked to the Clinton administration about Osama bin Laden: "They wrung their hands so helplessly and said, 'The Taliban are not turning him over, what can one do?' I remember I was surprised: If they are not turning him over, one has to think and do something."

The Senate Judiciary Committee is considering two more of President Bush's appeals court nominees -- Michael McConnell to the 10th Circuit, based in Denver, and Miguel Estrada to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Mr. McConnell, a law professor, has been a passionate opponent of abortion and has asserted that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided and should be overturned. He has described abortion as "evil" and has suggested that embryos should be given constitutional protection.

(His nomination has apparently softened his stance, however, at least publicly. He recently told Judiciary Committee members that he now views Roe as settled law, and therefore his personal views are irrelevant. Pro-choice advocates are understandably skeptical.)

Liberal advocacy groups have been left in a state of high anxiety by these two nominations. There seems little doubt that both men are prepared to advance the values of the right, if not the extreme right. But they are very difficult to fight. Mr. Estrada is an attractive nominee who could become the first Hispanic appointee to the Supreme Court. (A subtler, brighter Clarence Thomas?)

And Professor McConnell, who could well be President Bush's second appointment to the Supreme Court (it's assumed the first pick will be Hispanic), may benefit from the sheer fatigue of Senate Democrats having to fend off one nomination after another.

But even if neither man makes it to the Supreme Court, it's important that both nominations be looked at closely. The political right has been relentless in its campaign to control the federal courts, and that campaign is getting awfully close to an absolute victory. Seven of the 13 circuit courts are already controlled by Republican appointees, and it is possible that within two years that control will extend to as many as 12, and maybe all 13 circuits.

In the popular imagination, the Supreme Court is the court of last resort. But in any given year, the Supreme Court decides fewer than 100 cases. The circuit courts, on the other hand, will issue rulings on 28,000 to 30,000 cases each year.

For those who are concerned about reproductive rights, civil liberties, health and safety issues, the environment, and on and on -- it might be a good idea to pay much closer attention to the continuing takeover of the federal courts by the right.

KARACHI, Pakistan (Reuters) - Two gunmen burst into the offices of a Christian welfare organization in the Pakistani city of Karachi Wednesday and opened fire, killing six people, three of them Christians, and wounding two others, police said.

I thought you might enjoy hearing about an example of the environmental craziness unleashed in the Clinton military. As a military engineer, I was involved in an F-16 test program at Edwards AFB, CA. Evidently there was some endangered desert tortoise that was indigenous to the area. Before we could fly over that portion of the range, the base wildlife personnel had to comb the area and remove any tortoises, noting their location for subsequent return. This was required to lessen the impact upon them. Being first an engineer and second a smart aleck, I pointed out that important data was missing. To truly lessen the impact to the tortoise, their heading and speed should be taken at the time of pickup, then the tortoise could be placed in the projected position he would have reached if undisturbed. While this was a joke (and perhaps only funny to another engineer), the civil servant I mentioned it to thought it was a good idea. Hopefully, I didn't inadvertantly set base environmental policy.

• Osama bin Laden, driven into the Afghan mountains, hasn't been heard from since December. Possibly (I say probably) he is dead.
  
  
• Senior al Qaeda official Abu Zubaydah, chief of al Qaeda's military operations, captured in March, is in US custody, being grilled like a Fourth of July hot dog.
  
  
• Senior al Qaeda terrorist Abu Anas Al-Liby, who plotted the American embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania which killed 224 people. Reported arrested in Sudan, but the US government is mum due to sensitive relationship with Sudan, which once harbored bin Laden.
  
  
• Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, a high-ranking al Qaeda paramilitary trainer and particularly close associate of Abu Zubaydah, apprehended and handed over to U.S. authorities by Pakistani forces in January.
  
  
• The Taliban's former ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, turned over to US custody by Pakistan.
  
  
• 273 members of al Qaeda or of the deposed Taliban regime that sheltered them, in custody, with the number rising daily, and that back in January.
  
  
• Five senior al Qaeda members killed by US forces, bin Laden aides Muhammad Salah, Assadullah and Tariq Anwar al-Sayyid Ahmad, the group's operational coordinator Abu Saleh al-Yemeni and trainer Abu Ubaida. Two others, Abdul Aziz and Abu Faisal, were captured in mid-December.
  

Um, let's see . . . Alterman points out Bush's status as a minority president (indisputable) who won the EC without a clear vote count (would have been true of Gore also, but he had the majority of the nation) . . . and you seem to think that Alterman's point was to accuse Bush of totalitarianism. Maybe you can fill in about fifty logical steps you have leaped over.

In an alternate universe, in the near future:

Terrorists nuke D.C.

President Gore vows: 'They will pay'

Male walk-ons have essentially become an unwanted luxury. Most colleges work hard to maintain a roughly equal number of male and female participants - whether on scholarship or not - in athletics. They do so to comply with Title IX, the law prohibiting sex discrimination in federally funded institutions.

But their pursuit of that goal is entangled by budget limitations and the addition of thousands of new teams for women over the past decade. This delicate balancing act is disrupted each year when three to four times more men than women arrive unsolicited for the first week of practices, dozens of coaches and administrators said in interviews.

Athletic department administrators have generally responded to the disparity by telling coaches of women's teams to keep as many walk-ons as they can, even encouraging them to scour campuses for more candidates to fill their rosters. The coaches of many men's teams, meanwhile, have been assigned a reduced, fixed roster limit, a number that is quickly filled by established recruits. Often, there is no room for walk-ons.

"I hated the movie `Rudy,' " said Marilyn McNeil.

...

"If you're not going to get your uniform dirty during games, you shouldn't be on the team," said McNeil, who is also the chairwoman of the National Collegiate Athletic Association's committee on women's athletics. "I believe there is still an opportunity for a walk-on to bloom on our teams, but there has to be a cutoff date for those who just want to hang around. We can't afford it. It's time to tell these students: `You've got other talents. Go write about sports at the school newspaper, join the debate team, or maybe you've got a nice voice and belong on the stage.'

"Some guys just like to be part of the group. Then 10 years later they will talk about being on their college team, when the fact is they never played."

One sentence of the Florida Supreme Court's decision on hand recounts tells it all: "The will of the people, not a hyper-technical reliance upon statutory provisions, should be our guiding principle."

That is like saying, of a disputed umpire call in the World Series: "Athletic superiority, not a hyper-technical reliance upon the rules of baseball, should be our guiding principle." In our system, the will of the people is manifested through procedures specified in advance. When those rules are changed in mid-stream, something has gone terribly wrong.

Finally: Here’s a couple of historians’ posting from the Listserve, H-Diplo, comparing LBJ and Vietnam with GWB and the proposed Iraqi war. They are pretty interesting. They do, however, fail to note that another shared characteristic of both presidents is that neither man had been honestly elected president when deciding to embark upon an aggressive war.

A pattern of late marriage may actually increase the rate of divorce. During that initial decade of physical adulthood, young people may not be getting married, but they're still falling in love. They fall in love, and break up, and undergo terrible pain, but find that with time they get over it. They may do this many times. Gradually, they get used to it; they learn that they can give their hearts away, and take them back again; they learn to shield their hearts from access in the first place. They learn to approach a relationship with the goal of getting what they want, and keep their bags packed by the door. By the time they marry they may have had many opportunities to learn how to walk away from a promise. They've been training for divorce.

The Standard & Poor's 500, the index that measures the stock prices of large companies, has gained every 20-year period since it began in 1926. It even climbed 1.1 percent through the heart of the Great Depression -- 1929 to 1938. The short-term hiccups -- even the 25 calendar years in which the S&P fell, including the six when it fell more than 20 percent -- are more than outweighed by the market's overall upward climb.

The S&P has gone up for the year 51 times since it first began. It has averaged a 7 percent annual gain over the last 75 years, and it never has had a 30-year period in which it did not gain at least 4.4 percent.

In fact, seven 30-year periods since that time had rates of return of more than 9 percent.

The causes of the Bush chagrin are clear, but first let's address their argument that "the goal is not arms inspections but Iraqi disarmament."

That is exactly right, but for Bush to present arms inspection, which is a means to disarmament, as an alternative to it is deceptive. All arms agreements are based on inspections, and getting U.N. inspectors into Iraq without restrictions is the necessary means of enforcing the U.N. arms resolutions Iraq accepted in 1991.

For Bush, Iraq's action changes nothing.

In short, what Iraq wants is the respect of the principles of the UN Charter and international law, whether regarding its own interests and sovereignty or those of the other member-states of the United Nations. On this basis, Iraq was, and still is, ready to cooperate with the Security Council and international organizations. However, Iraq rejects any transgression by whosoever at the expense of its rights, sovereignty, security, and independence, that is in contradiction with the principles of the Charter and the international law. It is for this reason that Iraq has persevered, and thanks to its faith, is still prepared to endure more for this end.

The brains of this administration, starting with Dick Cheney, the redoubtable vice president, and Rumsfeld, who has been Cheney's alter ego for 30 years, gets its energy from two groups with powerful Washington influence. Neither group is likely to be placated by sending U.N. inspectors back to Baghdad.

One group is the neoconservatives, whose overriding interest is Israel. The other group is the unilateralists, whose main interest is steering clear of multilateral agreements and knocking nations that defy U.S. policy or challenge U.S. supremacy.

The neoconservatives, represented in and around the Pentagon by people like Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and Richard Perle and supported by a host of influential East Coast, neo-con publications, are those who persuaded Bush to "park" the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and go after Iraq first.

Far more likely, I believe, is that a U.S. attack on Iraq would weaken moderate Arab regimes and revitalize terrorist cells everywhere.

There was near-total Arab condemnation of the Sept. 11 attacks, which were seen as barbaric and unjustified.

The civilians in the Pentagon are gung-ho for war with Iraq, but what of the military? Officers still in uniform must stay silent, but we get the flavor from those who are not.

"It might be interesting to note that all the generals see this (Iraq) the same way, and all those that never fired a shot in anger are really hell-bent to go to war," says Anthony Zinni, a retired Marine Corps general who has been the Bush administration's special envoy to the Middle East.

The U.S. military, those who would actually fight the war, aren't so keen as the civilians. I wonder why.

[I]n February 2001 Enron presented an imposing facade, but insiders knew better: they were desperately struggling to keep their Ponzi scheme going. When one top executive learned of millions in further losses, his e-mailed response summed up the whole strategy: "Close a bigger deal. Hide the loss before the 1Q."

The strategy worked. Enron collapsed, but not before insiders made off with nearly $1 billion. The sender of that blunt e-mail sold $12 million in stocks just before they became worthless. And now he's secretary of the Army.

It was crony capitalism at its worst. What kind of administration would keep Mr. White in office?

A story in last week's Times may shed light on that question. It concerned another company that sold a division, then declared that its employees had "resigned," allowing it to confiscate their pensions. Yet this company did exactly the opposite when its former C.E.O. resigned, changing the terms of his contract so that he could claim full retirement benefits; the company took an $8.5 million charge against earnings to reflect the cost of its parting gift to this one individual. Only the little people get shafted.

The other company is named Halliburton. The object of its generosity was Dick Cheney.

Halliburton responded to questions with a statement, saying that the Dresser-Rand employees who had turned 55 before the unit was sold would still receive all their pension options and benefits, as if the acquisition and spinoff had never happened. Officials had considered preserving the younger workers' benefits as well, Halliburton added, but decided not to, because "it would be, in effect, paying for service with Dresser-Rand" after the employees had begun working for the company that had bought the unit. The buyer was Ingersoll-Rand, an industrial conglomerate that has its headquarters in Woodcliff Lake, N.J., and is incorporated in Bermuda.

Halliburton said about 140 workers would get full benefits and about 300 workers were affected by the change. According to Halliburton, it "would have been entirely up to Ingersoll-Rand" to establish a new pension plan for the workers under 55, matching the benefits they had lost as a result of the spinoff.

Paul Dickard, a spokesman for Ingersoll-Rand, disagreed. "This really remains a Halliburton obligation," he said. "It's very clear."

The finger-pointing between Halliburton and Ingersoll-Rand is only part of the employees' problems as they struggle to sort out what happened to the money they were repeatedly told they had coming.

A few more thoughts on the wretchedness of that Kristof column:

1. Much as liberals like to posthumously remember Kennedy as an ardent liberal champion, he was in fact an ardent cold warrior. Not unlike Bush, he aggressively warned of the Soviet threat and escalated the fear, scaring elder statesmen in his own party, leaders in Europe and Eisenhower with his inflated rhetoric, which was viewed by many in both parties as the scare tactics of a callow and inexperienced kid trying to win office. At the least, it was hardly the rhetoric of a statesman with a "passion to avoid war." Not unlike Bush, and despite the hindsight-is-20-20 view of Kennedy sycophant Sorenson, he contemplated NOT using the UN, and had doubts about Adlai Stevenson's toughness and the effectiveness of the body. Moreover, just as critics say of Bush's case, you could argue that the threat of the Cuban missiles was more theoretical than real, and that it was ONLY a threat to the U.S., that missiles in Cuba would only have given the Soviets parity to match the missiles we had at their doorstep; I don't agree with this view, but the point is that it's hardly a slam-dunk argument to say that the missiles were inherently and clearly a threat to the U.S. The Kennedy doctrine that no missiles but ours could be allowed in our hemisphere is at least as arbitrary as the doctrine of preemptive war that Bush is advocating -- and the Bush argument in fact seems a good bit compelling after the attacks of last year. Indeed, Kennedy had to carefully shape his argument and case to make it clear to the U.S. and the world that we were not the aggressors and that the Soviets were.

2. Kristof calls war "the first tool" off the shelf. What planet is he on? Did he see the speech? Haven't we tried sanctions, air strikes, diplomacy, arms inspections, etc., for 11 years now? Wasn't Bush at the UN's doorstep offering again the chance to promote alternatives to war yet again? Can't Saddam pick up the phone whenever he wants and get the inspectors back in and destroy his weapons? I love these critics who were complaining all summer that Bush was ready to fight the war alone, and now that he has gone to the UN instead have switched to arguing, essentially, that he just doesn't really mean it. That's about as lame as it gets.

3. Sorenson says Kennedy would have done "everything he could, with U.S. muscle, to get inspectors in there." Um , what exactly is different in Bush's approach? Here's a president providing muscle -- the only muscle i think, except for Britain -- while listing demands, including the return of arms inspectors, to the UN.

4. Kristof mentions the "gracious exit" we gave the Russians at the end of the crisis. Er, we offered Saddam a"gracious exit" 11 years ago, dude, when we let him stay in power if he abided by UN resolutions. He hasn't done so. What does he think JFK would have done if the Russians had agreed to our deal and continued to build the missiles?

I don't mean to make this sound like sheer liberal-bashing. I think Bush has yet to make a fuly coinvincing case for war. What's really dismaying here is the sheer lack of care and poor thought that characterizes this column. THIS is the level of analysis and intelligence that NY Times reporters possess?

Good dissection of Krugman's prattle today, but you allowed him to get away with repeating a fiction that's understandable for a non-economist to make, but for a macroeconomist it's positively embarrassing.

Krugman wrote: "...the milder oil price spike before the gulf war was also followed by a recession."

That's simply false. The recession of 1990-1991 began *before* Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in August. There was an oil price shock during the invasion and war, but it did not prevent the recession from ending in March 1991, the same month the Gulf War ended.

It's an easy mistake to make because by the time we figure out we're in a recession, we've been in it for a while. In 1991 and 1992, the popular myth was that there was still a recession, because economists were looking back at the end of 1990. Furthermore, unemployment is a *lagging* economic indicator, meaning that it reaches its peak many months after GDP growth bottoms out. Unemployment was high in 1992, but that was a result of the recession of a year before that had ended. That didn't mean that the recession was still going on. Krugman shouldn't be making this mistake, one that no introductory macroeconomics student would. He should be incapable of it, yet for an economic titan, he sometimes has trouble with adding and subtracting.

Information on the dates of US recessions can be found here.

Graham Allison, a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government who has written a book about the missile crisis, noted that Kennedy had stipulated that the missiles absolutely had to be removed from Cuba. But Kennedy turned first to diplomacy and a blockade. He offered the Russians a graceful exit and thus saved lives and avoided a dangerous spin into the unknown.

Today as well, why shouldn't war be a last resort instead of the first tool that President Bush grabs off the shelf?

Before launching a war, Mr. Bush still needs to show two things: first, that the threat is so urgent that letting Iraq fester is even riskier than invading it and occupying it for many years to come; second, that deterrence will no longer be successful in containing Saddam.

The shifting rationale for the Bush tax cut - it's about giving back the surplus; no, it's a demand stimulus; no, it's a supply-side policy - should have warned us that this was an obsession in search of a justification.

The shifting rationale for war with Iraq - Saddam Hussein was behind Sept. 11 and the anthrax attacks; no, but he's on the verge of developing nuclear weapons; no, but he's a really evil man (which he is) - has a similar feel.

The idea that war would actually be good for the economy seems like just one more step in this progression. But one must admit that there are times when war has had positive economic effects. In particular, there's no question that World War II pulled the United States out of the Great Depression. And today's U.S. economy, while not in a depression, could certainly use some help; the latest evidence suggests a recovery so slow and uneven that it feels like a continuing recession. So is war the answer?

No: World War II is a very poor model for the economic effects of a new war in the Persian Gulf. On balance, such a war is much more likely to depress than to stimulate our struggling economy.

There is nothing magical about military spending - it provides no more economic stimulus than the same amount spent on, say, cleaning up toxic waste sites.

The reason World War II accomplished what the New Deal could not was simply that war removed the usual inhibitions. Until Pearl Harbor Franklin Roosevelt didn't have the determination or the legislative clout to enact really large programs to stimulate the economy. But war made it not just possible but necessary for the government to spend on a previously inconceivable scale, restoring full employment for the first time since 1929.

By contrast, this time around Congress is eager to spend on domestic projects; if the administration wants to pump money into the economy, all it needs to do is drop its objections to things like drought aid for farmers and new communication gear for firefighters. In other words, if the economy needs a burst of federal spending, neither economics nor politics requires that this burst take the form of a war

And in any case it's not clear how much stimulus war would provide. One assumes that the necessary munitions are already in stock, so there will be no surge in factory orders. There will be spending on peacekeeping - won't there? - but it will be spread over many years.

US missile shortage delays Iraq strike

By Sean Rayment
(Filed: 30/12/2001)

A SHORTAGE of cruise missiles has thrown plans for a full-scale strike on Iraq into disarray.

US strikes against Afghanistan, Sudan and in Kosovo have all but depleted ALCM stocks
America's supply of the air launched version, one of the US air force's most sophisticated and deadly weapons, has become so depleted that military chiefs are pressing Boeing, the manufacturers, to speed up their production.

Even so, the first of the new batch of missiles ordered last year is not expected for months, and it may take longer to rebuild stocks to a level that would make such an attack viable.

Strikes against Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998 and Kosovo two years ago virtually exhausted the US supply. The number of conventional [non-nuclear] air launched cruise missiles left within the inventory is believed to be fewer than 30.

Meanwhile there is the potential economic downside, which may be summed up in one word: oil.

Iraq itself currently supplies so little oil to the world market that wartime disruption of its production would pose little problem. But neither the Arab-Israeli war of 1973 nor the Iranian revolution of 1979 directly affected oil production.

Instead, the indirect political repercussions of conflict were what caused oil prices to surge. This time around, Arab leaders have warned that an invasion of Iraq would open the "gates of hell." That doesn't sound good for the oil market.

It's worth remembering that each of the oil crises of the 1970's was followed by a severe recession - and that the milder oil price spike before the gulf war was also followed by a recession. Could rising crude prices undermine our weak economic recovery, creating a double-dip recession? Yes.

None of this should deter us from invading Iraq if the administration makes a convincing case that we should do so for security reasons. But it's foolish and dangerous to minimize the potential economic consequences of war, let alone claim that it will be good for the economy.

Although the president's speech yesterday was persuasive in many respects, he was neither specific nor compelling in his effort to link Saddam Hussein to other, more urgent threats. As evil as Mr. Hussein is, he is not the reason antiaircraft guns ring the capital, civil liberties are being compromised, a Department of Homeland Defense is being created and the Gettysburg Address again seems directly relevant to our lives.

In the aftermath of tragedy a year ago, the chief executive told our nation that fighting terrorism would be "the focus of my presidency." That -- not Iraq -- remains the right focus.

During the past four years, Al Qaeda has attacked Americans here at home, in Africa and in the Middle East. We still do not know where its top operatives are or what they might be planning. There is evidence that Qaeda members are returning to Afghanistan, where thousands of Taliban supporters still live and lawlessness prevails. We have not given the government of Hamid Karzai even a fraction of the help it needs to make Afghanistan a permanent terrorist-free zone. Creation of an effective worldwide antiterror coalition remains a work in progress. Restructuring our intelligence services, law enforcement agencies and military to defeat the terrorist threat continues to be in the design stage.

If United Nations inspectors are again rebuffed by Iraq, we should also give notice that we will destroy without warning any facilities in that country that we suspect are being used to develop prohibited arms. Even if those suspicions are later proved wrong, the blame should fall on Iraq for denying access, not on the United States for trying to enforce the Security Council's will.

At the United Nations yesterday, the president began the job of spelling out the what and why of our policy toward Baghdad. The wisdom of that policy, however, will ultimately hinge on when he chooses to act.

There are plenty of conservative writers who do not, like Sullivan, regularly poison our discourse by engaging in false character assassination, deliberate distortion, and mindless, hateful hysterics toward those with whom they disagree.

Although America was bound together by emotion on Sept. 11, 2001, America isn't bound together by emotions. It's bound together by things that transcend emotion, by principles and laws, by ideals of freedom and justice that need constant articulation, perhaps especially when America's virtues seem most self-evident. What we suffered on that day will be an important part of the story of this country. But in the long run it will not be as important a part of the story as what we choose to do in response to what we suffered. It is possible to confuse temperateness with indifference and democracy with indecision, just as it was possible on 9/11 to feel terribly weak in the midst of our undiminished strength. But time will help us make those distinctions, if we continue to seek them out.

Mr. Bush himself has contributed to the business-as-usual atmosphere. He has done so by devoting much time to political fundraising and by bringing the war into the political arena, thereby putting at risk the national cohesion needed to fight such a war. He has done so by dramatically increasing the budgets for the military and for homeland defense while refusing to find ways to pay for those increases. In defending his favored ideology of tax cuts as though the nation were not at war, as though nothing had changed, he has left himself poorly placed to counsel sacrifice and flexibility in others. And while he has embraced the notion that America must fight for a higher purpose, Mr. Bush has yet to act as though his rhetoric persuades him. It is right that the United States must be fighting for liberty and opportunity and not just against Islamic terrorists, as the president has said. But in practice he still balks at rebuilding Afghanistan, devoting sufficient money for schools in poor countries, and promoting democracy among U.S. allies.

Bush, who knows so little about the world, is allowing people who have never fought and never served to define policy. A speech-writer dreamed up the "axis of evil," surely one of the more diplomatically stupid slogans ever invented. Warhawks such as Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, Karl Rove, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, all of Vietnam age, never wore a uniform.

Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., a guy with two Vietnam purple hearts and two bronze stars, has the right solution: "Maybe Mr. Perle would like to be in the first wave of those who go into Baghdad," he says.

• Iraq's war with Iran
  
• Iraq's invasion of Kuwait
  
• Iraq's use of chemical weapons against its Kurdish minority
  
• Iraq's torture of American POWs in violation of the Geneva Convention
  

The legal basis for war can only come through the Council and new resolutions relating to those that ended the Gulf War in 1991. Without Council support, this is nothing but Mr. Bush's war. We will get no help and no sympathy for our human casualties and our economic losses.

Our leaders and much of the media tell us that we're a nation at war. But that was a bad metaphor from the start, and looks worse as time goes by.

In both human and economic terms the effects of Sept. 11 itself resembled those not of a military attack but of a natural disaster.

Just inches away, former Enron adviser Paul Krugman makes the identical point: "Our leaders and much of the media tell us that we're a nation at war. But that was a bad metaphor from the start, and looks worse as time goes by. In both human and economic terms the effects of Sept. 11 itself resembled those not of a military attack but of a natural disaster."

This is unbelievably silly. "Wars" on cancer and drugs are metaphors because they aren't really wars. While one might reasonably complain that the formulation of a war "on terrorism" ill defines the enemy (though of course events have defined at last three distinct enemies--al Qaeda, the Taliban and Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq), there's no question it is an armed conflict--a literal war. Krugman is an economist, so language isn't his specialty, although likening a terrorist attack to a "natural disaster" is a bit much even then. But (Susan) Sontag is reputed to be a writer of some sort. You'd think she'd know what a metaphor is.

The ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court's dismissal of a complaint filed four years ago by Tausha Prince, then a sophomore at Spanaway Lake High School, about 35 miles south of Seattle.

Prince argued the Bethel School District violated her First Amendment rights of speech and religion, as well as a 1984 law forbidding public schools that take federal money from excluding religious or political extracurricular clubs if they allow others.

The Bush team's Orwellian propensities have long been apparent to anyone following its pronouncements on economics. Even during campaign 2000 these pronouncements relied on doublethink, the ability to believe two contradictory things at the same time. For example, George W. Bush's plan to partially privatize Social Security always depended on the assertion that 2-1=4 ? that we can divert payroll taxes into high-yielding personal accounts, yet still use the same money to pay benefits to retirees.

The Orwellian tactics don't stop with doublethink; they also include newspeak, the redefinition of words to rule out disloyal thoughts. Again, Social Security is a perfect example. Republican political consultants have found that in an era of plunging stocks and corporate scandal the word "privatization" has taken on negative connotations. The answer? Deny that personal accounts constitute privatization, and bully the press into going along. A Republican National Campaign Committee memo lays out the new strategy: "It is very important that we not allow reporters to shill for Democrat demagoguery by inaccurately characterizing 'personal accounts' and 'privatization' as one and the same."