It is true that the United States has some allies in its efforts to topple Saddam. It is also true that some of the governments opposing action in Iraq do so not for love of peace and international harmony but for more cynical reasons. France and Russia have a long history of trying to weaken the containment of Iraq to ensure that they can have good trading relations with it. France, after all, helped Saddam Hussein build a nuclear reactor that was obviously a launching pad for a weapons program. (Why would the world’s second largest oil producer need a nuclear power plant?) And France’s Gaullist tendencies are, of course, simply its own version of unilateralism.

But how to explain that the vast majority of the world, with little to gain from it, is in the Franco-Russian camp? The administration claims that many countries support the United States but do so quietly. That signals an even deeper problem. Countries are furtive in their support for the administration not because they fear Saddam Hussein but because they fear their own people. To support America today in much of the world is politically dangerous. Over the past year the United States became a campaign issue in elections in Germany, South Korea and Pakistan. Being anti-American was a vote-getter in all three places.

Long before Genghis W. Bush and his Boardroom Horde launched their campaign of rapine against the clapped-out Iraqi regime, there was a little incident involving hijacked planes, famous buildings and the mass slaughter of innocent people on American soil that caused a good deal of commotion at the time. You might remember; it happened on September 11 a couple of years back.

True, Genghis does mention it occasionally, as part of his successful bamboozling of the shell-shocked American people into blaming Iraq for the atrocity, which was of course financed and carried out by faithful followers of the extremist variant of Islam propagated worldwide by the Bush Family's longtime pals and patrons, the Saudi royals. The attacks were also facilitated at least in part (and perhaps--let's be charitable--indirectly) by extremist elements in the Pakistani secret service, the ISI, longtime ally of the Bush family firm, the CIA. The connections between these Bush cronies and the Taliban, al Qaeda and the killers of journalist Daniel Pearl are extensively documented in the public record.

Of course, the American public is told nothing of this record. Their own history--even the recent horror that exploded live on their TV screens that fateful September morning--is being falsified and obliterated by the Bush Regime and its cowed, corrupted and ignorant enablers in the media. Dazzled by the glitzy video-game graphics of the wardrumming TV networks, and battered by a ceaseless barrage of lies from their leaders--even from the sainted Colin Powell, whose much-ballyhooed "case for the prosecution" at the UN has since been revealed as a farrago of fake documents, doctored tapes and plagiarised schoolwork--a full 45 percent of Americans now believe the transparent lie that Saddam Hussein was involved in the September 11 attacks. Yet in the first months after the assault--before the Bush fog machine went to work--only 3 percent of the public believed this lunatic conspiracy theory, the Christian Science Monitor reports.

By Monday night, though, in his 48-hour-warning speech, the references to international law and the United Nations had become vestigial. Bush's defense of his decision to make war on Iraq was basic: "The United States of America has the sovereign authority to use force in assuring its own national security." He did not claim that Iraq is a present threat to America's own national security but suggested that "in one year or five years" it could be such a threat. ...

What is wrong with Bush's case? Sovereign nations do have the right to act in their own self defense, and they will use that right no matter what the U.N. Charter says or how the Security Council votes. Waiting for an enemy to strike first can indeed be suicidal. So?

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. ...

Bush may be right that the threat from Iraq is real, but he is obviously wrong that it is "clear," or other nations as interested in self-preservation as we are (and almost as self-interested in the preservation of the United States as we are) would see it as we do, which most do not.

Putting all this together, Bush is asserting the right of the United States to attack any country that may be a threat to it in five years. And the right of the United States to evaluate that risk and respond in its sole discretion. And the right of the president to make that decision on behalf of the United States in his sole discretion. In short, the president can start a war against anyone at any time, and no one has the right to stop him. And presumably other nations and future presidents have that same right. All formal constraints on war-making are officially defunct.

... In terms of the power he now claims, without significant challenge, George W. Bush is now the closest thing in a long time to dictator of the world. He claims to see the future as clearly as the past. Let's hope he's right.

Donald Rumsfeld says the American attack on Baghdad is "as targeted an air campaign as has ever existed" but he should not try telling that to five-year-old Doha Suheil. She looked at me yesterday morning, drip feed attached to her nose, a deep frown over her small face as she tried vainly to move the left side of her body. The cruise missile that exploded close to her home in the Radwaniyeh suburb of Baghdad blasted shrapnel into her tiny legs ? they were bound up with gauze ? and, far more seriously, into her spine. Now she has lost all movement in her left leg.

Her mother bends over the bed and straightens her right leg which the little girl thrashes around outside the blanket. Somehow, Doha's mother thinks that if her child's two legs lie straight beside each other, her daughter will recover from her paralysis. She was the first of 101 patients brought to the Al-Mustansaniya College Hospital after America's blitz on the city began on Friday night. Seven other members of her family were wounded in the same cruise missile bombardment; the youngest, a one-year-old baby, was being breastfed by her mother at the time.

Osama bin Laden, in his wildest dreams, could hardly have hoped for this. A mere 18 months after he boosted the US to a peak of worldwide sympathy unprecedented since Pearl Harbor, that international goodwill has been squandered to near zero. Bin Laden must be beside himself with glee. And the infidels are now walking right into the Iraq trap.

There was always a risk for Bin Laden that worldwide sympathy for the US might thwart his long-term aim of holy war against the Great Satan. He needn't have worried. With the Bush junta at the helm, a camel could have foreseen the outcome. And the beauty is that it doesn't matter what happens in the war.

He lied, he bribed, he forged and, finally, he tried spying. The only thing he didn't try was diplomacy. So George W. Bush and his good friend, Tony Blair, were forced to go to war alone.

It has always been clear that Mr. Bush wanted a war under his belt so that he could be remembered in the history books for the military prowess he was denied because of an accident of birth and a healthy dose of cowardice, which enabled him to avoid military service of the sort that others of his generation enjoyed. Although lacking firsthand experience in things military, he knew that if you are going to sponsor a war, it helps to have a reason. He learned that from the sponsors of other wars.

Lying didn't work. Examples abound. One was given on Oct. 8, when Mr. Bush spoke in Cincinnati and explained that one of the reasons we needed to disarm Iraq was because of the danger posed to the United States by unmanned aerial vehicles or UAVs.

"We're concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs for missions targeting the United States," he said. He probably got that information from an intelligence assessment released by the CIA the preceding week titled, "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs" which expressed the same concern. What neither the CIA nor the president pointed out (Mr. Bush because of geographical impairment, the CIA inexplicably) was that UAVs owned by Iraq, according to the Center for Defense Information, have a range of 500 miles. They could only pose a threat to the United States if they had a fierce tail-wind.

Bribery didn't work. Mr. Bush wanted to use Turkey as a staging ground for U.S. troops. The Turks were unenthusiastic about the prospect of troops but enthusiastic about a bribe.

The Turks wanted $10 billion in grants and $20 billion in long-term loans. Mr. Bush said no. All he wanted to do was station some troops in Turkey. Finally a deal was struck. The United States could use Turkey's ports and air bases for at least six months and in return the United States promised $5 billion in aid and $10 billion in loans. Notwithstanding the deal that was struck, the Turkish parliament voted to do what it thought was in its own best interests and refuse to allow U.S. troops to be based on its soil.

That came as a great surprise to Mr. Bush, who always rewards those who reward him and had never before encountered a situation in which economic interests did not trump principle. ...

Forgery didn't work. In December the U.S. Department of State issued a fact sheet titled "Illustrative Examples of Omissions From the Iraqi Declaration to the United Nations Security Council." It stated that "The Declaration ignores efforts to procure uranium from Niger." It asks: "Why is the Iraqi regime hiding their uranium procurement?" In his State of the Union Speech, Mr. Bush alluded to that, saying: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." The Brits probably learned that from us.

The answer to the question asked by the National Security Council was given in March. That was the month in which it was disclosed that the document that critiqued the Iraqi declaration to the United Nations concerning its compliance with the U.N. resolution was based on a document that was described as a "crude" forgery. The Iraqi officials who had allegedly tried to buy the uranium were not even in their jobs at the relevant times. When Colin Powell was asked about the error on CNN's "Late Edition" he simply said: "If that issue is resolved, that issue is resolved. But we don't believe that all issues with respect to development of a nuclear weapon have been resolved."

Spying may have worked, but its disclosure was mildly embarrassing. It was disclosed by the Observer, a British newspaper. That paper reported that it had obtained a memo describing a surveillance operation in the United States that involved interception of the home and office telephone calls and e-mail of U.N. delegates. ... It cited "the whole gamut of information that could give U.S. policymakers an edge in obtaining results favorable to U.S. goals or to head off surprises."

On Iraq, lines have become blurred between mainstream and radical politics in the world of Islam, thanks to the U.S. approach, which is widely seen as unjust and hegemonic.

A new realignment, bringing together a broad spectrum of political forces against the United States, is crystallizing in Arab and Muslim lands.

American policy toward Iraq has alienated most of the important political secular and religious actors who, until now, had been unwilling to join with radical anti-American forces.

James has broached the topic of the possible "stickiness" of weblogging in schools. It's probably time for our edublogging group to begin discussing some of the stickiness areas. I'm sure individual schools and districts will begin to establish rules and requirements that fit the contour of their own school makeup as they begin to adopt web logs, but us "eBn"ers probably can establish some basic "good sense" rules to help those getting started, especially in the area of what would make good legal sense.

I know for our school I wrote a letter that I adapt for the individual age level group involved. I'll try to upload a copy here to the site this week. We're having our parents all sign permission to use their child's name on our sites. This permission is put into the student's file that's kept in the office. The teacher will have a list of which student's names may not be used (to date we've gotten 100% permission). We're sticking to first names only at least in the beginning. I've also given the parents the option of choosing a pseudo first name for their child. So on our sites when you see a name such as "Dalton", the child's first name might not even be Dalton but rather that's just the child's pseudo chosen by his parents. I know our parents liked having this choice, it helped them because it gave them control over the amount of "public-ness" put out there about their child.

Another issue in my district (might not be an issue in another district) was with the information teachers might be placing on their sites. In our building we can't write notes to the entire class unless the note receives prior approval from the office. (Remember, the issue here isn't whether you agree with that or not...that's just the way it is here so I had to deal with having an answer). I think that's where the aggregator and RSS feeds can be so critical to implementation in many districts. I know my administrator liked the idea that she could receive feeds from all the sites in one place, which helped to ease her comfort level with avoiding some of the stickiness that she might have to answer for later.

Obviously, the "stickiness" areas for an elementary school will be vastly different than for a high school. In my planning, I just don't want to see the fear of having some "stickiness" issues to deal with become so large that an attempt is made to "brochure-ware" the web logs because to me then we've defeated the whole purpose of using weblogs in the first place. I know as time goes on more and more of these kinds of issues will work themselves out, but I'm making an attempt to have somewhat of a rule game plan initiated in my beginning stages of building the total school weblog network. [educatorasylum News]

You might think that if there had been any true case for war, it would be obvious to more of the world's leaders. Why would you need all the browbeating and threats? But the case was not obvious, because some very bright people in the U.N. Security Council, all in fact friends of the United States, thrashed it out and could not agree. Mostly, all they wanted was time and patience for inspections. But Mr. Bush, gifted intellect and learned scholar that he is, knew better than all of them, and besides, in the Texas he comes from, all that matters is that you have the biggest fists or are first out with your gun.

Though most are now aware that anti-American sentiment is rising, many avoid introspection, and instead join pundits and politicians in pointing fingers at France. And so, [Michael] Moore's timely reminder has never been more urgent: "The rest of the world knows we've done these things," has says. "We just don't want to believe this about ourselves. And I mean, who would?"

Remaining ignorant is costly, however, especially as we forge ahead with the same kind of behavior that's brought us to this place. "Well, you lost 3000 people," Moore imagines citizens in other countries saying. "We here in Southeast Asia lost 4 million. We here in Guatemala lost 200,000. We here in Chile lost 10,000 people. . .  They're not so sympathetic if we are going to ignore what's being done in our name."  

And that's where we find ourselves. Like Steve Tesich, those of us who've deeply loved America, and believed, despite her flaws, that she was the land of the free and home and the brave (with liberty and justice for all, amen) feel betrayed, heartbroken and angry by what's transpired since Sept 11. If Russia or China behaved this way, Americans would unite in condemnation, and correspondents would be acting like objective journalists, instead of cheering the carnage on.

But make no mistake. The rest of the world will never forget our preventative war -- or scenes from the blitz on Baghdad. We've crossed a sad and horrifying threshold from which is no return, no matter how swift and successful this military campaign may be. How can we support our country's actions without betraying conscience? How can we express this sinking feeling without (as many accuse) betraying our troops?