• Then-GOP Presidential candidate Governor George W. Bush: According to the Houston Chronicle: "Bush, in Austin, criticized President Clinton's administration for not doing enough to enunciate a goal for the Kosovo military action and indicated the bombing campaign might not be a tough enough response. 'Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the president to explain to us what the exit strategy is,' Bush said." [Houston Chronicle, 4/9/99]

• Then-House Majority Whip Tom Delay (R-TX): The deployment of U.S. military forces in Kosovo is "just another bad idea in a foreign policy without a focus." [Editorial, Saint Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota), 3/17/99]

• Then-Senate Assistant Majority Leader Don Nickles (R-OK): "The Administration, and NATO as a whole, greatly miscalculated the response Slobodan Milosevic would have to a bombing campaign. As I predicted, the Administration has escalated what was guerilla warfare into a much more serious conflict. The bombings have unleashed an evil reign and resulted in a humanitarian disaster." [Senator Don Nickles, Press Release, 4/21/99]

• Representative Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-CA): "This is the most inept foreign policy in the history of the United States." [Washington Times, 4/29/99]

• May 4, 1999 -- The Scotsman reported, "The Senate majority leader, Trent Lott, said at the weekend: 'I think that, as Jesse Jackson would say, give peace a chance here. There seems to be some momentum. There seems to be an opportunity - we should seize this moment. As a matter of fact, you know, I had doubts about the bombing campaign from the beginning. I didn't think we had done enough in the diplomatic area.' " [Scotsman, 5/4/99, emphasis added]

• May 19, 1999 -- GOP members of the House Armed Services Committee voted to prevent the use of any of the funds in the fiscal year 2000 defense authorization to fund NATO's efforts -- combat or peacekeeping -- in Yugoslavia. Democratic Rep. Gene Taylor (TX) offered an amendment to remove the Yugoslavia funding restriction, but Republican committee members defeated the measure 27 to 31. [CQ House Committee Coverage, 5/20/99]

• May 20, 1999 -- While speaking on the floor of the Senate Banking Committee about funding air assaults in the Balkans, Sen. Phil Gramm (R-TX) said, "I don't see how we are going to save Social Security if we keep spending the surplus." [Washington Times, 5/21/99]

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In the exceedingly unlikely event that the anti-war movement had won the day, those servicemen would still be alive this morning.

It all unfolds with ritualized familiarity. The people who clamor for war downplay or ignore the obvious consequence of war--that human beings on both sides are going to lose their lives. Until the dying starts, and then their anger is focused on those who opposed the war from the start.

Character 1: "Before 9/11, the adminstration had no plans to go to war with Iraq.

Character 2: "Sure--if by "had no plans" you mean "was planning all along."

1: "They made every effort, but diplomacy failed."

2: "Sure--if by "diplomacy" you mean "insisting that we get our way no matter what."

1: "We have a broad coalition behind us!"

2: "Sure--if by "broad coalition" you mean "a small group of extremely reluctant allies."

1: "This war will make our country safer!"

2: "Sure--if by "safer" you mean "more likely to be attacked by terrorists."

1: "You're completely out of step with the American public, you know."

2: "Well--if by "American public" you mean "the 45% who think Saddam Hussein was personally involved in 9/11--oh, you get the idea."

They were unforgettable images: Residents of this southern Iraqi town openly welcoming coalition forces. They danced in the streets as a picture of Saddam Hussein was torn down.

That was yesterday.

Traveling unescorted into Safwan today, I got a far different picture. Rather than affection and appreciation, I saw a lot of hostility toward the coalition forces, the United States and President Bush.

Some were even directed towards the media. (It was the first time I heard somebody refer to me as a "Satan.")

To be sure, conversations with people on the street here begin relatively calmly. But the more they talked, the angrier they got.

In part, much of their discontent stems from the unknown. In speaking with them, the newly-liberated Iraqis ask the same questions that seem to nag many outside Iraq.

Why are you here in this country? Are you trying to take over? Are you going to take our country forever? Are the Israelis coming next? Are you here to steal our oil? When are you going to get out?

The harshest critics of the war protests in downtown Portland angrily called the demonstrators "terrorists" and wished aloud that the police and courts would treat them as such.

This morning, that idea gets put to the test at the Oregon Legislature, where a ranking senator (State Sen. John Minnis, R) has introduced a bill to "create the crime of terrorism" and apply it to people who intentionally cause injury while disrupting commerce or traffic.

If convicted, they would face imprisonment for life.

The fact is that national hysteria does not translate well. Americans not only are afraid but they are isolated in their fear, with a few scattered sympathizers, like Albania and Uzbekistan, arrayed against the overwhelming opinion of a world that thinks we have gone collectively nuts.

Most commentators, noting the macho strutting of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the president's insistence that the world is either for us or against us, have blamed the Iraq policy more on testosterone than terror, with an unhealthy dash of hyper-religious certainty mixed in. But Bush often comes across as truly frightened, convinced of threats that the rest of the world just doesn't see.

These presidential fears were on full display in his ultimatum speech.

The president claimed that Hussein has "some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." By any reckoning, this just isn't true. No one doubts that Iraq has developed chemical and biological weapons of uncertain effectiveness, as have many other nations. But effective anthrax? Not known. Smallpox? No evidence. Nuclear weapons? Certainly not now.

"The danger is clear," Bush said. "Using chemical, biological or, one day, nuclear weapons, obtained with the help of Iraq . . . terrorists could fulfill their stated ambitions and kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in one country or another."

"Clear dangers" seldom contain so many ifs or coulds, so many varied weapons in the hands of so many unidentified terrorists intent on acting "one day . . . in one country or another." If we don't attack Hussein, the president surmised, he "might try to conduct terrorist operations."

"These attacks are not inevitable," he conceded, but "they are . . . possible. And this very fact underscores the reason we cannot live under the threat of blackmail."

A possibility is not a fact but a guess, a worst-case worry that could be applied to any cloud on the international horizon. If there is a threat of blackmail here, it is self-imposed.

If the U.S. does not attack now, "in one year or five years the power of Iraq to inflict harm on all free nations would be multiplied many times over," Bush said.

No sane analyst believes this. After 12 years of international sanctions, Iraq is weaker now than it was before the 1991 gulf war. Five years from now? Who knows? No one does, including the administration. But the thought that a Third World international pariah could multiply its strength and turn itself into a power sufficient to blackmail the most powerful nation in the history of the world is nothing but panic-mongering.

The result is a "pre-emptive" war that, by the administration's own admission, breaks international law.

International law permits every nation to defend itself, by force if necessary. If a nation has evidence that an attack is imminent, it is legally justified in acting first, to hit before it is hit.

But no one, not even the administration, argues that an attack by Iraq is imminent. The president himself says the danger may be five years away. To strike Iraq now is to strike against a will-o'-the-wisp, not a certain danger, to hit the other guy before he even gets the gloves on. International law forbids this.

The Bush administration knows this and says the solution is not to obey the law but to change it.

The administration's National Security Strategy, issued seven months ago, reads now like a preplanned justification for this war in its rejection of "traditional concepts of deterrence."

The paper grants that international law "conditions the legitimacy of pre-emption on the existence of an imminent threat--most often a visible mobilization of armies, navies, and air forces preparing to attack." Obviously, the Iraq situation doesn't meet that definition, so the paper says that "we must adapt the concept of imminent threat to the capabilities and objectives of today's adversaries."

As we plunge into the most reckless, unjustified, and immoral war since the Philippines and commit a blunder that may echo down through the decades; let's say it clearly, without shading or pretense, without genuflection or fig leaf: our President is a liar. A serial, repetitive, egregious liar. A man who lies not only in the service of his single minded crass policies, but who does so automatically- as a reflex. Mr. Bush isn’t just the most dishonest President I’ve seen in 4 decades of watching them, he’s the most consistently dishonest politician I’ve ever seen.

The cakewalk that some seemed to expect before and immediately after the start of hostilities has now become what surely everyone should have expected it. ...

Comparisons to the 1991 Gulf War may have lulled Americans into thinking that all campaigns against Iraq can be wrapped up in four days -- and Saddam's army was stronger then. But there's one absolutely crucial difference: in 1991 we were fighting to oust Saddam's troops from Kuwait, where they probably understood they should never have been in the first place. This time the Iraqis are fighting for their homeland.

Yes, their homeland is ruled by a brutal dictator, and yes, I don't doubt that many if not most Iraqis would be happy to see Saddam gone. But there's a difference between wishing that your government had a better leader and welcoming the influx of hundreds of thousands of heavily armed soldiers from halfway around the world, backed by an air force that is bombing your cities round the clock. This sort of thing tends to bring out the nationalist streak. ...

You do sometimes have to shake your head and wonder what planet American intelligence is derived from. Gordon writes, "There was no disguising the fact that the attacks [in the south] by the fedayeen" -- militia fighters in civilian clothes driving SUVs and toting machine guns and grenade launchers -- "were a setback and a surprise." Surprise? What sand does your head have to be buried in not to anticipate, in 2003, that your massive Western army invading a Muslim Arab country was likely to find itself under assault from such guerrilla forces?

I have served my country for almost thirty years in the some of the most isolated and dangerous parts of the world. I want to continue to serve America. However, I do not believe in the policies of this Administration and cannot defend or implement them. It is with heavy heart that I must end my service to America and therefore resign due to the Administration’s policies.

Those who stand against this attack are dunned as "Not supporting the troops."  One might suggest the best way to support troops is to see them brought home safely.  One might also suggest that support continues after the shooting stops.  This does not appear to be on the agenda for the Republican Party.  A vote along party lines today in the House Budget Committee slashed $9.7 billion from veterans disability compensation programs, as well as from other programs.  These cuts, pushed through the committee by the majority-holding Republicans, are part of the plan to see Bush's new $1.57 trillion tax cut through.  Wave that flag, George. ...

On September 11th, I sat in numb horror as the images of carnage unfolded before me on the television.  On that day, I was the victim of terrorism, along with every other American.  Today, I sit in numbed horror as more carnage unfolds.  Hundreds of massive missiles have rained down on a city far away, killing indiscriminately among the young, the infirm, the old and the innocent.  My government did this.  My nation did this.  My leaders did this.  Today, I am the terrorist.

So are you.

There is no justification for this attack.  Saddam Hussein and his forces had been effectively disarmed by the first Gulf War, by the UNSCOM inspections, and by the more recent UNMOVIC inspections.  According to Hussein Kamel, son-in-law to Saddam Hussein whose comments to the UN in 1991 were recently reported in a buried Newsweek story, Iraq was pretty much disarmed of mass destruction weapons even before the first war.  The Bush administration, in pushing for this war, has foisted lie after lie after lie upon the American people and the world.  The world didn't buy it, but they weren't dependent upon lapdog media sources like ours for their data.

We are the terrorists now, stupid underinformed terrorists who dance to the tune of a corporate media machine that will profit wildly from this attack.  NBC, MSNBC and CNBC are owned by General Electric, one of the largest defense contractors on earth.  They will be paid handsomely in military contracts because of this, as they always have been.  Yet GE gives us the news we need to understand what is happening.

When Bush proclaimed that "The Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised," that was a lie. ...

Bush asserted that Iraq "has aided, trained, and harbored terrorists, including operatives of Al Qaeda." The last part of that was a lie.... Senior officials of both the British and U.S. intelligence services have told the press of their convictions that assertions of a Saddam/Al Qaeda connection are errant nonsense....

Bush’s assertion in the speech that, when we bring "democracy" to Iraq at gunpoint, this "will set an example to all the Middle East" has been proclaimed as "not credible" in a secret State Department report ("Iraq, the Middle East, and Change: No Dominoes") leaked to the Los Angeles Times and published on March 14. The report noted that "Electoral democracy, were it to emerge, could well be subject to exploitation by anti-American elements." Where democratic elections have been tried in the region‘s Muslim countries, the results have been victories for Islamist parties in Algeria (a result abrogated by a military coup) and in Turkey, and a strong showing by Islamists in Morocco.

This is not an argument against democracy, but a reminder that international politics is not checkers, but chess: one has to think eight or 10 moves ahead. Bush is no chess-player. His war on Iraq is a gift to the Bin Ladens of this world and to the extremist theocrats; it will fuel the fiery preachments of the Islamist mullahs, facilitating recruitment by Islamist parties everywhere, and creating a climate in which the creation of new generations of terrorists will take a quantum leap.

"War criminals will be punished," Bush intoned, "and it will be no defense to say I was just following orders." This from a president who, in his first year in office, used the U.S. veto power at the United Nations to reject the International Criminal Court set up to prosecute war crimes (while asserting the U.S. military’s right to be exempt from prosecution under international law).

Bush tried to blame France for causing the war by threatening to use its veto. What hypocrisy: since the United Nations creation, the United States has used its veto 76 times, and 41 of those vetoes in the last three decades concerned attempts by the United Nations to call Israel to account for its violations of multiple U.N. resolutions. Not just the Muslim world but many outside it find this record shockingly one-sided."