[mjm!] LA Times columnist Robert Scheer with a progressive (i.e. truthful) message to the U.S. public- also, i suspect, the first to provide the u.s. public with Lynch Rescue- Take 2.. this iraqi arms - u.s. arms analogy v sexy-

"On Sunday, the Washington Post wrote the obituary for the United States' effort to find Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction. "Frustrated, U.S. Arms Team to Leave Iraq," read the headline, confirming what has become an embarrassing truth — that the central rationale for the invasion and occupation of oil-rich Iraq was in fact one of history's great frauds.

The arms inspectors "are winding down operations without finding proof that President Saddam Hussein kept clandestine stocks of outlawed arms," reported the Post, putting the lie to Colin Powell's Feb. 6 claim at the United Nations that Iraq possessed a functioning program to build nuclear bombs and had hoarded hundreds of tons of chemical and biological materials.

Unfortunately, this does not necessarily mean the world is a safer place. The deadly weapons of mass destruction have proved phantom in Iraq, but the Bush administration is now doing its best to ensure that the world becomes increasingly unstable and armed to the teeth. Although the nuclear threat from Iraq proved to be nonexistent, the United States' threat to use nuclear weapons and make a shambles of nuclear arms control is alarmingly vibrant."