In re "The U.S. Is Looking for an Excuse To Fight"

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It's an interesting article, but I don't think it's particularly material to anything at this stage what the publically-stated excuse is when they go into Iraq.

If - when - we go into Iraq, no-one will be more pleased than me. Well, no-one who isn't Iraqi by birth or family connection, anyway. Iraq will be liberated, and with luck, a stable democracy may well be planted in the region, with catastrophic consequences for neighbouring aristocracies and autocracies. Ken Adelman will barely be able to contain himself. Pretty good outcome for all concerned - particularly the Iraqi people, people in nearby Arab countries, the oil industry, and the afore-mentioned Ken Adelman!

If they don't end up going, though, there is a silver lining: it can only lead to a mass re-engagement with politics. Stopping the war would mean that mass public action has thwarted a Presidential ambition, an ambition that the majority of people believed was completely inevitable and unstoppable - and that they stopped it completely outside of the normative political system. I don't regard that as being a terrible outcome either; indeed, it could be just a shot in the arm for democracy.