There is only one hinge point on the legitimacy of this proposed military action, and that is whether or not Saddam's government is prosecuting a program of developing and retaining NBC weapons of the sort for which the only use is to slay populations wholesale.

IF he is, it is my opinion that he should be disarmed, as he agreed to do.   It is unsettling to recall that there are tens of thousands of gallons of toxic weapons-grade chemicals unaccounted for in the Iraqi armamentum.

That is the only question of fact. As far as Bush's practices he is, in my view, mishandling the matter tragically, and is power-mad and incompetent to preside. If he had the brains god gave a peacock, the facts on which his alarums are based would have been known and their rationale clear. As it is we are being handed skimpy glimmers of possibility on the side of the prosecution, with blood and mayhem in the offing as a certainty. Vonnegut really summed it up in his description of psychopathic personalities -- his sense of consequences is pathetic, and his indifference to the human side of things is comic folly at its worst.

The core of the problem is the man is not candid, is not capable of being truthful, and is in love with his own exercise of power for its own sake. He and his Iraqi counterpart are two of a kind. Would they could go duke it out on a deserted island somewhere. I believe the Iraqis proposed such a duel, but were nto taken seriously!

A