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Striking first in order to pre-empt an enemy that has troops massing along your border is one thing. Striking first against a nation that has never even explicitly threatened your sovereign territory, except in response to your own threats, because you believe that this nation may have weapons that could threaten you in five years, is something very different.

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But George W. Bush defied embarrassment and slew it with a series of Orwellian flourishes. If the United Nations wants to be "relevant," he said, it must do exactly as I say. In other words, in order to be relevant, it must become irrelevant.

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Meanwhile, here's the latest bullshit from
Ari "you can tell I'm lying because my lips are moving" Fleischer:

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Earlier, the president's spokesman, Ari Fleischer, said that the "coalition of the willing" was made up of countries of every race and faith, on every continent, with a population of 1.18bn and a GDP of $27 trillion.

He said the coalition was growing all the time, but put the number at 35.

And Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said it was larger than that assembled during the first Gulf War in 1991.

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The relevance of race, faith, continent, and GDP was left unexplained by Mr. Fleischer, as was the question of how the lukewarm support of 35 governments equated to the enthusiastic support of 1 billion+ people.

Meanwhile, as a CBC Radio guy pointed out, many of these countries have merely allowed US and British planes to fly over their territory. Such countries weren't counted among the coalition in 1991, while back then, troops were provided by sixteen (16) nations. What is it this time, three (3)? Not counting a little Czech chemical-decontamination unit?

[ 20 March 2003: Message edited by: 'lance ]

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So first of all, the right Bush is asserting really has no limits because the special circumstances he claims aren't really special. Striking first in order to pre-empt an enemy that has troops massing along your border is one thing. Striking first against a nation that has never even explicitly threatened your sovereign territory, except in response to your own threats, because you believe that this nation may have weapons that could threaten you in five years, is something very different.

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The New Yorker this week has a relevant quote from Tolstoy:

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What an immense mass of evil must result, and indeed does result, from allowing men to assume the right of anticipating what MAY happen. Ninety-nine percent of the evil of the world is founded on this reasoning.

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