THE BIG IDEA
A DOCTRINE PASSES

For more than fifty years, the security of the world has been kept in fragile balance by an elegant idea, shaped in large part by a man who is a skeptic about big ideas. George F. Kennan, who is now ninety-eight years old, coined the phrase "containment," and with it the doctrine of deterrence designed to keep the world's superpowers poised in a perpetual standoff, relegated to their separate spheres of influence, forced into peace by the threat of a nuclear war too terrible to win. [read more]

thanks to Talking Points Memo

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Detailed Analysis of October 7 Speech by Bush on Iraq

In 1995, after several years of deceit by the Iraqi regime, the head of Iraq's military industries defected. It was then that the regime was forced to admit that it had produced more than 30,000 liters of anthrax and other deadly biological agents. The inspectors, however, concluded that Iraq had likely produced two to four times that amount.

Zunes: "If this is really a concern, then why did the United States supply Iraq with the seed stock of anthrax spores back in the 1980s?" [William Blum, "Anthrax for Export: U.S. Companies Sold Iraq the Ingredients for a Witch's Brew," The Progressive, April 1998, p. 18]

This is a massive stockpile of biological weapons that has never been accounted for, and is capable of killing millions.

Zunes: "This is like saying that a man is capable of making millions of women pregnant. It's a matter of delivery systems, of which there is no proof that Iraq currently has."

thanks to American Samizdat

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Robert Fisk: What the US President wants us to forget

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He's Old Enough To Know Better

thanks to Cursor

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Statement of Senator Jim Jeffords, Senate Resolution Authorizing the Use of Force Against Iraq

thanks to BuzzFlash