Oh, no! We're all going to die! Oh, wait, never mind, everything's okay . . . . More non-confidence building from the Bush administration about terrorist threats:

President Bush's domestic security adviser, Tom Ridge, today [Sunday] played down the significance of reports of new threats from the Qaeda terrorist network, describing the threats against the United States as "really nothing new." . . .

"There are no new threats," Mr. Ridge said on Fox television. "There are the same old conditions. It's just part of the continuing threat environment that we assess. It's really nothing new. . . .

He said that last week's dire warning from the F.B.I. about the possibility of "spectacular" new terrorist attacks in the United States reflected intelligence gathered in recent weeks and months, not in recent days, and that the warning was "nothing more than a reminder" of Al Qaeda's capabilities to state and local law enforcement agencies.

I am not reassured. IMO, there is too much Chicken Littling going on at Ridge's operation. I have never felt that Ridge is the right man for the job, and every week that goes by I feel that more strongly.

Update: Richard Cohen makes the same point, though more eloquently, in his Nov. 19 piece in the WaPo:

Now we all live in Amity.

That was the fictional summer resort threatened in the 1975 movie "Jaws." Amity's police chief wanted to warn everyone that a dangerous shark was loose, while the mayor, fearful of losing business at the height of the summer season, wanted everyone to keep mum. Maybe in the remake, the shark will be played by terrorists and both the mayor and the police chief by Bush administration officials. As for the shark, code it yellow. . . .

Tom Ridge, who is in charge of homeland security, soon announced that there was nothing new in the latest alert. "The threats . . . are the same threats we've been hearing now for a year," he said. The message was clear: Be alert, be relaxed, worry, don't worry -- and please memorize the color chart so you will know the appropriate degree of confusion.

Indeed.

I guess al Qaeda doesn't teach OPSEC, or Operational Security. It's not the same thing as secrecy, although it includes secrecy. I have this thought because this morning's WaPo carries a story about a top-level AQ now in US custody, whom Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge said "is providing information that is useful to investigators."

Gov. Ridge provided no details on the type and quantity or quality of information the AQ member is giving interrogators, but he isn't the first captured AQ member to spill his guts. It seems that al Qaeda members have no better concept of resisting interrogation, if captured, than Japanese troops did in World War II.

In that war, Japanese soldiers were never taught how to resist interrogation, or even that they should resist interrogation. They were trained and expected to fight to the death or kill themselves rather than surrender. An incredibly huge number did just that. But the Japanese command never anticipated involuntary capture, such as happened when Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) troops were knocked unconscious by artillery but not killed, or were so badly wounded they were incapacitated. Such occasions were not infrequent.

When captured, IJA troops talked freely. They just didn't know any better. Furthermore, they felt deep shame, shame of a social context unknown in America. IJA troops believed that they could never return home no matter who won the war. So a large number willingly became turncoat and actively worked with US commands. There is a photo in the Life book of WW II that shows an IJA officer sitting at the navigator's seat of an American medium bomber. Other bombers are visible in the photo through the window. The Japanese officer is directing the formation to his old headquarters.

American troops during the Civil War were also often very forthcoming with information to their captors, both USA and CSA. But in the 20th century, the US Army began to train its soldiers what to expect if captured, and how to resist answering interrogator's questions. This change was slow to come because many commanders thought that to teach the troops how to act if captured was to place an imprimatur of approval on being captured. By WW II, US troops had been taught not to provide more information than their name, rank, service number and home city and state. Technically, the captor power could not compel a prisoner to provide more information than that, a point honored only in the breach in many cases, of course.

The objective of this training was to prevent militarily useful information from being given to the enemy. The Korean War showed that this kind of training to resist interrogation was inadequate. North Korean and Chinese captors certainly attempted to gain military information, but unlike Germany and Japan, they also tried to subvert allied troops' loyalty to their country. Through many techniques, including torture, the communists sought to compel US prisoners to make public statements admitting that they were war criminals or denouncing the American government and its policies. They sought to inculcate a sense of despair among US prisoners, that they would never see their homes or loved ones again unless they cooperated with the communists. In many cases, unfortunately, they were successful.

The Germans had never expected US or British troops to betray their country, although they were happy to accept betrayal if it occurred. But they didn't try to inculcate it. The Japanese were as unprepared to take prisoners as they were to expect they would be taken prisoner, and never imagined any use for allied prisoners other than slave labor, which was exceptionally brutal. The NK and Chinese communists were the first to see prisoners as a battlefield for psychological warfare.

As a result of the Korean War, the US military developed its first Code of Conduct for US forces in 1955 by executive order of President Eisenhower. The code was intended "to provide a mental defense for U.S. POWs to use to resist enemy POW management practices." The code has six short articles:

One: I am an American, fighting in the forces which guard my country and our way of life. I am prepared to give my life in their defense.

Two: I will never surrender of my own free will. If in command, I will never surrender the members of my command while they still have the means to resist.

Three: If I am captured I will continue to resist by all means available. I will make every effort to escape and to aid others to escape. I will accept neither parole nor special favors from the enemy.

Four: If I become a prisoner of war, I will keep faith with my fellow prisoners. I will give no information or take part in any action which might be harmful to my comrades. If I am senior, I will take command. If not, I will obey the lawful orders of those appointed over me and will back them up in every way.

Five: When questioned, should I become a prisoner of war, I am required to give name, rank, service number, and date of birth. I will evade answering further questions to the utmost of my ability. I will make no oral or written statements disloyal to my country and its allies or harmful to their cause.

Six: I will never forget that I am an American, fighting for freedom, responsible for my actions, and dedicated to the principles which made my country free. I will trust in my God and in the United States of America.

This code's utility was proven during the Vietnam War, after which US prisoners reported that's it tenets gave them a foundation to resist the very sophisticated and brutal North Vietnamese interrogations. (Here is the current explanation and training guidance for the code, updated to provide guidance for soldiers when in terrorist captivity.)

Navy pilot Jeremiah Denton, for example, reported that he was tortured and otherwise mistreated so severely that he finally broke and answered a single question: "How long does it take to build an aircraft carrier?" Denton gasped out, "Days, months, years." Immediately, the interrogators untied Denton and gave him cool water. They returned him to his cell and loudly announced to the other prisoners, "Commander Denton has cooperated and answered questions! He will be given special privileges and extra food!" In despair, Denton tap-coded a message to his comrades of what the question and his answer had been, and he admonished them not to follow his example.

During the Vietnam war the services also developed comprehensive SERE training - survival, evasion, resistance to interrogation and escape. This training continues.

But fortunately it seems that al Qaeda members receive no such training at all.

A sustained but limited-scope bombing campaign against Iraq is recommended in a piece in the New York Times. Instead of full scale war if the new inspections don't work,

There is a more sensible first response should Iraq fail to comply. The response could be based on intensive air and satellite inspection and openly volunteered intelligence information gathered from member nations. This would be followed with methodical and precise air strikes against credibly identified weapons of mass destruction. . . .

First, no-flight zones now applicable to northern and southern Iraq would be extended throughout the country, giving inspection aircraft full access to all areas. Any firing on such aircraft would constitute a "material breach" under the current United Nations resolution.

Second, member nations would be authorized to conduct air inspection by reconnaissance aircraft at any altitude. They should make the results of aerial surveillance and information gathered by military satellites fully available to United Nations inspection teams. This increased intelligence transparency would substantially buttress the Security Council resolution. Analysis and integration of such information from all government and nongovernment sources could lead to a credible assessment of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and the identification of targets for destruction.

Third, the Security Council would authorize precision aerial strikes by the United States and other nations against Iraqi targets if they are not destroyed on the ground voluntarily by Iraq or by United Nations inspectors. Instead of destruction by all-out war, this authorization would limit military action to achieve the limited objective of disarmament.

This idea should be studied in greater detail, but my gut feeling is that it presumes reconnaissance is more effective than it really is. I don't think it meets the criteria of just War theory because it does not result in a more just peace. Neither does it have a reasonable prospect of success because it is not decisive. For how long must the bombing continue or be restarted? This is a plan for perhaps years of precision bombing. It calls for a process, but not a solution. It leaves the Iraqi people in the grip of murderous oppression.

"Prolonged indecision is never a just aim of war." Douglas MacArthur.

Senator Zell Miller is a blithering idiot and this piece he wrote for OpinionJournal proves it. Bemoaning the Nov. 5 massacre of the Democrats, he syas the party must remake itself. We must stand for something! New ideas are needed! Such as:

Why couldn't our party push for a national lottery with the proceeds going to help pay the cost of college for deserving students in America?

Lotteries are inherently deficit spending and that fact cannot be fixed. See this page, which I wrote to (unsuccessfully) fight the referendum on a Tennessee lottery. It explains why this is the case.

As I write these words, my Sitemeter shows One Hand Clapping has had exactly 50,000 unique visits since I loaded the Sitemeter program, a few weeks after I began the site. I am grateful for everyone's kind attention to by scrivenings, and hope you will continue to read!

A former psychiatrist explains "The Fantasy Life of American Liberals" - "one can only conclude that this election has left liberal elites further out of touch with reality than at any time in recent memory. As a former psychiatrist, I can confidently predict that logic and empirical evidence will have no therapeutic effect. It's time for the Thorazine. "

Al Qaeda's next major strike will be in Prague next week, says Reid Stott, who compiles a lot of terrorist-warning coverage from the US and Europe and make a grim conclusion based on "the current indicators available to the public."

Not a lot of posting for me this weekend, so here is an index of recent postings.

Reaching out to Iraqi Christians and why I think Al Sharpton actually has a point.

In war, is it good for the enemy to be "bloodlessly beaten"? Civilian casualties and the potential campaign against Iraq.

Why using WMDs against US troops is a no lose move for Saddam, and why the US cannot retaliate against Iraq if Saddam does so.

Don't worry about Saddam's chemicals and bugs, says Michael O'Hanlon. It's only his nuclear program that matters, and the inspectors can take care of that.

On the other hand, an ill wind blows for new weapons inspections for several good reasons.

A cruise for our 25th anniversary in 2005 is what the command sergeant major and I have been thinking of, and this development just sealed the deal, we think.

An ill wind blows for new weapons inspections despite Michael O'Hanlon's assurances to the contrary. First reason: Saddam did not actually accept the UN Security Council resolution, as this CNN report makes clear. Iraq said only that it would "deal with" the resolution under the terms of "international law."

Iraq's response to the United Nations is unclear on whether Baghdad has really accepted the U.N. resolution - and that could mean a military confrontation is waiting.

Iraq's defiant nine-page letter, delivered Wednesday to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, does not use the word "accept" but states that "we will deal with resolution 1441, despite its bad contents."

After seeing Baghdad's response, a senior U.S. State Department official said it was still not clear if Iraq had even said "yes" to the U.N. resolution demanding unfettered access for inspectors to search for weapons.

Iraq also denied that it has any weapons programs of the kind subject to inspection under the latest and previous UNSC resolutions. Thus, the UN should be prepared for an equally defiant response to the next-UN-mandated deadline: by Dec. 8 Iraq must deliver a full declaration by Dec. 8 of all weapons and weapons sites relating to those listed in the resolution. That means that Dec. 8 is a potential crisis date if Iraq still insists it is WMD-program free.

Baghdad has protested that the U.N. resolution violates international law. Thus, as another blogger (sorry, I lost the link) pointed out, all of Iraq's "cooperation" with the inspectors is dependent on Iraq's own definition of international law. Since Iraq has yelled for many months that an UN mandate must not violate Iraqi "sovereignty," what do you bet that any important place the inspectors want to go will do just that?

Furthermore, there are serious reasons to doubt that the inspection team chief, Hans Blix, is up to the job. As reported by Frank Gaffney, Jr., a senior Defense Department official in the Reagan administration and president of the Center for Security Policy in Washington,

Findings of Iraqi noncompliance being presented by Hans Blix--a man who was recently publicly ridiculed by a former colleague and past deputy foreign minister of Sweden as "weak," "easily fooled" and "unsuitable for a showdown with Saddam Hussein." These charges are all the more credible in light of Mr. Blix's repeated whitewashing of Iraq's nuclear program prior to Operation Desert Storm. More recently, he has reportedly withheld from council members U.S. intelligence assessments about the magnitude and disposition of Saddam's deadly biological arsenal.

This report hardly builds confidence in the will of the inspectors to shove their way through Iraqi roadblocks, both the literal and figurative ones.

Finally, the fact is that the weapons inspections routines can work only if Saddam and government are completely honest. As explained by Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, and Kelly Motz, editor of IraqWatch.org:

Inspections can only do one thing well: verify that a country's declarations about a weapons program are honest and complete. It is feasible for inspectors to look at sites and equipment to see whether the official story about their use is accurate. Inspectors can rely on scientific principles, intelligence information and surprise visits to known weapons production sites to test what they are told. It is a different proposition altogether to wander about a country looking for what has been deliberately concealed. That is a task with no end.

For inspectors to do their job, they have to have the truth, which can only come from the Iraqis. As President Bush told the United Nations last week, the world needs an Iraqi government that will stop lying and surrender the weapons programs. That is not likely to happen as long as Saddam Hussein remains in power.

Overall, I pessimistic about the upcoming inspections.

Don't worry about Saddam's chemicals and bugs, says Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution. It's Saddam's nuclear program that is the only real concern. And the next inspectors can take care of that. Curiously, he says that only "hardliners" are worried that the inspections could fail.

Yet hardliners fear that Mr Hussein could still hide enough weapons of mass destruction to remain a threat. History suggests the fear is warranted.

Only "hardliners" have this fear. I wonder why he uses "hardliner" as a pejorative since he admits the fear is warranted.

There are two main responses to this worry. First, not all weapons pose the same threat. Preventing Iraq from obtaining a nuclear weapon should be our priority. Mr Hussein has possessed chemical and biological agents for a couple of decades but has not dared used them since the late 1980s. Nor is there any evidence that he has transferred such agents to al-Qaeda, a group that he cannot control or aid without running a high risk of being caught - and then overthrown. With nuclear weapons, by contrast, Mr Hussein might be emboldened to attack his neighbours or internal minorities, believing his arsenal protected him from an American-led reprisal.

I agree that keeping Iraq nuke-free is the number one priority. O'Hanlon is confident that inspectors can do that.

Unless the Iraqi leader manages to acquire such [weapons-ready atomic] materials from abroad - a rather unlikely prospect but one that could be made even less likely by closer US-Russian co-operation - he will have a hard time producing them with inspectors present. The necessary infrastructure is expensive, sophisticated, hard to hide and even harder to move. It would include thousands of finely machined centrifuges or large electromagnetic separators. These facilities are a far cry from the small, highly mobile laboratories used to produce chemical or biological agents.

Second, inspectors now have new tools that will help them find all types of illicit materials. They will be equipped with the latest detection devices. Most important, they will have assured private access to Iraqi weapons scientists, possibly interviewing them outside the country. That approach, combined with the granting of asylum to scientists and their families, will help the inspectors to find secret facilities.

There is good reason to be optimistic that inspections can eliminate much of Saddam's chemical and biological capabilities and, most important, prevent him from obtaining the bomb.

Is this an overly optimistic evaluation? I think so, for reasons I will explain in my next post.

How to waste even more taxpayer money is explained on fellow Nashvillian Bill Hobb's blog. It seems that -

The Tennessee Department of Transportation is running around the state hyping its $1.2 billion plan to put in a rail link from Bristol to Memphis. As the Knoxville News-Sentinel reports today, TDOT is "making the case for developing a Bristol-to-Memphis corridor that would compete with ever-expanding traffic along Interstates 40 and 81. If fully implemented, the new plan could initially move 350,000 commercial trucks off the roadways, as well as divert 115,000 automobile trips per year."

But as Bill points out, that works out to only 315 fewer cars per day along the 520-mile route. So someone driving the entire route between 6 a.m. and midnight would encounter about one fewer car per hour traveling the same direction.

Does that sound like it's worth $1.2 billion? Of course not. What Bill surely knows. though, is that achieving actual traffic reductions is not the point of these kinds of boondoggles. Advocates are simply desperate to emplace an alternative to private autos, no matter what the cost, no matter the fact that almost no one wants to use them, according to a Harvard study cited on Bill's site. This is not a pro-transportation plan, it is an anti-auto plan. And that's the point.

"Absorbing the Iraqi letter to the U.N. is a surreal experience," wrote Andrew Sullivan on November 14.

It reads a little like those notes from the Washington snipers. No eighth grader would be proud of its syntax or even its spelling. Whatever else it is, it surely isn't the product of a serious government with actual policies and actual members. It's the note that might be wriiten by a psychopath - full of inane self-grandeur, stupid threats, excessive Unabomber-style rhetoric and any number of Nazi-like references to the "Zionist entity." If you got a letter like this in the mail, you'd call the cops. My favorite piece of rhetorical weirdness: "We shall see when remorse will not do any good for those who bite on their fingers." Ohhhhh-kay. I point this out because some people insist on arguing that we are dealing with an actual state, a legitimate government, or an erratic but familiar kind of leader. We're not. We're dealing with a psychopathic megalomaniac. Which is why we have to assume that everything he says is a lie; and yet we also have to assume that amid these pathological lies there might by a smidgen of truth. We need criminal psychologists, not diplomats.

Indeed. And that is why it is impossible to have "principled negotiations in good faith" with Saddam.

Admiral Yamamoto still inexcusably alive, asserts Rand Simberg. And that proves the war is not going as well as it should be.

Today's posts so far deal with why using WMDs against US troops is a no lose move for Saddam and why the US cannot retaliate against Iraq if Iraq uses WMDs.

More postings tonight, I think. In the interim, we are going out to dinner to celebrate my second son's 15th birthday two days ago. He got his learner's permit today, so he's pretty excited about learning to drive. On the other hand, I feel gray hairs just popping out of my head. . . .

Welcome Instapundit readers!
Here is the posting Glenn Reynolds linked to.

Why we can't use nukes in this war

Why the US cannot retaliate against Iraq if Iraq uses WMDs

I have noted that before the Gulf War, the US warned Iraq that its use of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons would result in atomic retaliation by America, a threat that was credible then and helped prevent Saddam from ordering their use.

In the potential war against Iraq now, though, we cannot make a credible threat of WMD (meaning, atomic) retaliation against Iraq. Here's why.

The US has no biological weapons. For at least 30 years, US policy on bioweapons has been "no use" under any circumstances. US bioweapon research has been done to only to develop defensive measures.

US policy on chemical weapons is "no first use." We have stated that we reserve the right to retaliate in kind against an enemy who uses chemical weapons against us. It is an empty reservation because the US does not have the means to deliver chemical weapons nor the stocks of chemical weapons to be delivered in the first place. I was trained as a chemical target analyst, and the systems we trained (in a classroom) to employ have not been in US inventory since the mid-1950s. There simply were, and are, no newer systems, so we used the only data available, despite the fact that we didn't have them anymore. The quantity of chemical weapons required to achieve significant casualties against enemy forces is simply enormous, and the US has never made the huge investment in infrastructure and manning that is required to maintain the capability. And not least, American military commanders never liked chemical warfare anyway, and had a revulsion for it that dated back to World War I.

US policy on atomic weapons is that we reserve the right to use them as the situation warrants. Successive administrations, both Democratic and Republican, specifically rejected declaring "no first use" of nuclear weapons.

All this means that the only WMD that the US can retaliate with is atomic. But there are technical constraints in using them, too. First, the arsenal of US nuclear weapons has shrunk dramatically since September 1992, when Bush 41 denuclearized the US Army, which had a lock on small-yield atomic warheads. Since then, the Army has had none. Even the smallest Air Force warheads are many kilotons in design yield. Neither the Navy nor Marines ever stocked tactical warheads. (All this info is current as of my retirement from the Army in 1995, but you can bet that the Clinton administration didn't buy more nukes.)

So unless G. W. Bush decides that truly massive atomic retaliation is called for, we really have nothing to A-bomb Iraq with. That's the technical side of why we cannot retaliate in kind against Iraq. But those are not the only reasons.

Furthermore, John Major's claims to the contrary, allied threats to use WMDs as retaliation cannot be a decent bluff. We are not making war against the Iraqi people, whom we have already declared are in need of liberation, not conquest. To nuke Iraqi civilians as retaliation for an act of Saddam's madness would make no sense at all and would be the most immoral thing I can imagine.

Using atomic weapons against Iraq would accrue to the US no strategic or tactical benefit. Tactically, conventional weapons are now so destructive that nukes are not even necessary just to destroy enemy formations and installations. The idea that we would nuke cities is repulsive: our objective is not to destroy Iraq but to liberate its people from murderous repression.

Military historian T. R. Fehrenbach wrote in This Kind of War, "You may fly over a land forever; you may bomb it, atomize it, pulverize it and wipe it clean of life - but if you desire to defend it, to protect it, to keep it for civilization, you must do this on the ground, the way the Roman legions did, by putting your young men into the mud. The object of warfare . . . is not to destroy the land and people, unless you have gone wholly mad."

There is no military situation imaginable that would even remotely justify American use of atomic weapons.

The political consequences of using atomic weapons would be enormously destructive to America's alliances and coalitions. NATO always accepted, very reluctantly, the potential use of nuclear weapons if invading Soviet forces threatened the actual survival of a NATO member state. For America to use nuclear weapons against Iraq would engender such harsh reactions from our NATO allies that the alliance would probably dissolve. Now, some may argue that NATO may as well dissolve, but if so, it should be done for the right reasons, and nuking Iraq isn't one of them.

Other nations around the world would run away from alignment with America as fast as they could. Our forces based overseas would likely be ejected by their host nations. American efforts to promote democracy in Asia, Africa and South America would lose all credibility. American citizens abroad would be subjected to the rule of the mob in many countries. No longer would America be a "shining city on a hill" for the rest of the world to emulate.

Morally, using atomic weapons against Iraq fails every test of just war theory. Because they can achieve no legitimate military purpose, they could do nothing except destroy for destruction's own sake. Yet destruction for its own sake is exactly what bin Laden's terrorists did on Sept. 11. Such nihilism can never be a just end of war. Atomic weapons inherently cannot be used in a way that discriminates between military personnel and innocent civilians.

Potential downwind effects could kill or make ill infants, adults, the elderly, the helpless, livestock and crops and would likely extend into neighboring countries. Iraqis and surrounding peoples would be thrown into panic, creating the worst refugee crisis in history. All these results would be morally bankrupt. They could never be excused and would never be forgiven.

Anyone who calls for using nuclear weapons against Iraq, even in retaliation, abandons the finest principles of America's ideals and hopes. Proposing their use might scratch a jingoistic itch for overwhelming force and quick results. But such calls must not prevail. Nuclear weapons would be militarily useless. Their use would start a rapid decline of America's greatness on the world stage and would be a true crime against humanity, irredeemably immoral.

Using WMDs against US troops is a no lose move for Saddam. Recent reports that Iraq tried to buy one million auto-injectors of nerve agent antidote (NAA) led many commentators to claim that Saddam planned to use nerve gas (properly called nerve agent) against allied troops if we invade Iraq.

Saddam has a history of spectacular miscalculation. Before the Gulf War, Secretary of State James Baker warned Iraq's foreign Minister, Tariq Aziz that if Iraq used chemical or bioweapons against US troops, "The American people will demand retribution, and we have the means to exact it." This threat was perfectly credible and, according to the May/June 1996 edition of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists,

It [Iraq] didn't use such weapons because the leadership feared nuclear retaliation. After Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz gave this account of Desert Storm to U.N. representative Rolf Ekeus last August [of 1995], the Washington Post wrote that this was "the first authoritative account for why Iraq did not employ the biological or chemical arms at its disposal."

However, Ekeus said that Aziz was spinning the story. The real reasons, Ekeus said, were that America's attacks quickly and thoroughly disrupted Saddam's ability to command and control his forces. Also, the ground attack was over so fast and American formations moved so fast that Iraqi commanders never had time to formulate a special-weapons attack plan. This lesson is certainly not lost on American planners today.

Former British Prime Minister John Major said in September -

AMERICA will NUKE Baghdad if Saddam Hussein dares unleash weapons of mass destruction, it emerged last night.

The chilling warning to Iraq was revealed by former Tory Premier John Major, who led Britain in the 1991 Gulf War.

During that conflict, allied forces were armed with "battlefield" nuclear weapons and prepared to use them in a counter attack, he said.

Saddam was privately warned his capital would be obliterated if he used weapons of mass destruction against allied troops or Middle East targets - including Israel.

Of course, John Major does not speak for the United States and today even a bluff threat of retaliation in kind by the US is not credible.

In the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam had everything to lose and nothing to gain by using NBC. Based on the texts of the US Congress' authorization for President Bush to make war against Iraq and the text of the UN resolution calling on UN members to eject Iraq from Kuwait, Saddam knew that his regime would not be targeted. The Congress limited its war powers declaration against Iraq to reversing the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and did not authorize conquest of Iraq. For that matter, President Bush never contemplated doing that.

Saddam knew that his regime was not targeted by the allies even if they succeeded in liberating Kuwait. With his survival thus practically guaranteed in advance, the only thing that could definitely cause his death or downfall would have been to use NBC against allied forces. Furthermore, the US threat to use mass-destructive weapons in retaliation also served as assurance that such weapons would be use only in retaliation. Thus Saddam knew that

he faced an entirely conventional threat, the power of which he never actually comprehended,

his personal survival and that of his regime was assured even if he lost the battle for Kuwait,

and the only way neither of the above facts would be negated was for him to use NBC weapons.

Today, however, Saddam's survival, and that of his regime, is precisely what is threatened. The US made regime change an explicit aim of foreign policy in 1998, and the present administration has emphasized it heavily.

So what has Saddam to lose by using NBC weapons against US troops? Really, nothing. Using NBC against US troops would carry great risk that many Iraqi civilians would die as collateral damage. I once believed this consideration might stay Saddam's hand, but I don't think so any more. His single overriding goal has always been personal survival and holding onto or increasing his power. He is a dictator, and dictators do not rule for the benefit of the people. Saddam has no vision for Iraq that outlives him personally. It is most likely that he would sacrifice Iraqi lives wholesale in order to hang onto life and power.

As I wrote in "Fighting a winter campaign in Iraq," American maneuver units - armor, infantry and their supporting artillery units - would make poor targets for chemical attack because they move too fast to target effectively. But the US logistic tail could be an attractive target.

But the Iraqi military and especially the Republican Guard will suffer terribly for using NBC weapons against US forces. The vengeful fury of combat soldiers, Marines and airmen will be prodigious in the extreme; they will attack and kill Iraqi forces without relent or remorse. Nothing in American military history will compare.

Saddam's use of WMDs cannot possibly assure his victory. But sadly, that fact can't be relied on to dissuade him from using them anyway.

The Defense Department's "Knowledge is Power" Information-Collection Program has caused a lot of hand wringing lately with breathlessly related fears that civil liberties and individual privacy will be chucked out the window once the gummint gets the technology to read every email and intercept every phone call worldwide.

Fortunately, Lynxx Pherrett has gone ad fontes (to the sources) for the real skinny, so everyone take a deep breath and calm down.

More denial and uncritical thinking of American religiousity. I started to fisk this piece, but it is so insufferably foolish that it really just rebuts itself.

Somehow, Saddam's drive to acquire mass destructive weapons is really a "crisis of humanity" generally rather than specifically a threat to America (or Israel). Thus,

only when threats are replaced by principled negotiations, and violence is replaced by nonviolence, the people of Iraq, and the world, will live in greater security, dignity, and harmony with each other.

The writers are contentedly unaware that negotiations have been underway with Iraq for 11 years. All the while Saddam has been rearming. "Principled negotiations" can be done only by principled parties, and it would be nice if the writers had at least have imagined that maybe, just maybe, Saddam is not principled, that Saddam is bent on conquest and uses negotiations only as a foil to gain time rather than achieve a solution.