Even before George W. Bush was elected, his likely strategy seemed to
be that he'd take the US into a war with Iraq to reap the political
benefits in 2004 (and for some other bad reasons that you probably
know about). Recent revelations show that preparations to invade Iraq
did, in fact, start only a few days after inaguration day.

Then 9-11 came along and created an opportunity for Bush to make his
(non-sequitor) arguments that an invasion of Iraq would:
1) make the US more secure from the threat of terrorism AND
2) be a positive step against world wide nuclear proliferation.

IMHO, the sad truths are;
1) Bush's actions in Iraq have created the perfect conditions for a
new generation of America hating people in the Islamic world. How
much better it would have been for the US to be on a course of energy
independence from the middle east and, therefore, much more able to
constructively engage that region to lift itself out of the middle
ages. There's little doubt that we're now, and for a long time to
come, *less* secure than before;
AND
2) the best way to control the proliferation of nuclear weapons is
through the vigilance of strong international bodies and individual
nations cooperating to pursue compliance with the Non-Proliferation
Treaty. Unfortunately, George Bush's behavior has damaged the
viability of these international bodies and the US's credibility to
lead these efforts within the international community... again we've
become *less* secure and I'm just hoping the a WMD doesn't come
floating into the US in a shipping container.

I just logged on to learn more about the best CG position for my
glider. But, I just couldn't resist pointing out that the emperor
wears no clothes!