I just want to go on record as saying I support the military buildup in the Persian Gulf in opposition to Saddam Hussein. Doing everything we can to disarm him is, I believe, a worthy goal. What I don't like is the braindead justifications for it coming out of the White House. There is a difference between coercing Saddam to disarm and removing him from power. And there is a big difference between military action in Iraq and an appropriate response to 9/11. But our current White House want to mush it all together for public consumption. They are, in typical fashion, over-reaching and someone must call them on it.

This pattern has been there all along. Despite the fact that most voters rejected Bush and his tax cutting economic program at the polls. Despite that he is in office basically on a technicality (a politicized Supreme Court). This administration went ahead with its radical economic plans simply because they had the power to do so, having failed to convince a majority of the voters of its supposed worth.

In the case of Iraq, the White House has taken the naturally broad support for military action in the aftermath of 9/11 and extended it to their own laundry list of military oppurtunities. We did the easy part of crushing the Taliban militarily but now that the hard work remains to rebuild the nation into Afghanistan into secure nation governed by the rule of law and the voice of its people, we leave the field. This administration is quick to take the glory but slow to do the real work. We should hold them accountable for that character flaw.

Now we find them trying to channel the support for action in Afghanistan into support for the next item on their list, Saddam. It doesn't matter that Saddam had nothing to do with the tragic attack of 9/11, he just has the misfortune to be the next target on the list of administration targets. Just as Bush read a squeaker of an election in which most people voted against him as some kind of mandate, Bush in reading support to fight terror as permission to conduct any military operation he chooses as long as he can fit it under the umbrella of the "war or terra".

The war on terror, disarmament of Iraq, and Iraqi regime change are three distinct goals with three distinct sets of justifications. We need to stop Bush from misapplying the justification for one to accomplish the other. This is not going to win us any friends in the international arena and will in fact tend to poison the well of goodwill that came about in the WTC aftermath. Bush is squandering that good will in the pursuit of his own misbegotten agenda.

As in so many things, be they foreign policy,fiscal policy, or failed business management, Bush may not have to pay the price for his blunders. As always, those who follow will have to clean up his messes. It may be Collin Powell, the next administration, or our children and grandchildren. Someone else will have to pay the price for this.

Stop the madness now! In the last impeachment round there was an attempt to remove a duly elected president for offenses having nothing to do with his policies. This time we have a non-elected president who carries out destructive and dangerous policies. A new impeachment certainly seems more justified to me.