Here's the full text of my essay (which stubbornly won't link correctly):

Our eyes were wide open! The world was riveted to the continuing pronouncements coming from Washington D.C. and the intrigue at the United Nations. When the bombing started it came as no surprise, except maybe the delusional "Butcher of Baghdad" sitting in his lavish palace. The U.N. Ambassador from Iraq said, "the game is over," then quietly entered his apartment and booked the next flight for Syria.

Our eyes got wider! To those who are fascinated by watching things blow up, the game had just got interesting. Televised live, the images of Saddam's Palace exploding in the night was spectacular. The breathless commentary from the on-the-scene reporters could hardly capture the moment adequately. Maybe it wasn't quite "Shock and Awe," but it was spectacular.

Our eyes are still open, aided by the ubiquitous TV camera. What we see now unfortunately, is not the fireworks display of precision munitions, but the aftermath of homemade bombs aimed at us instead of by us. The game has changed. Broken bodies attest to broken dreams of an easily secured postwar Iraq. Broken promises that the dangers fought were real and present. Broken faith that it was a "just" war when the fears confronted were not justified.

Close your eyes. The image of the Trade Center Towers falling is still there, still haunting. Listen closely and hear the Palestinian women shrieking with delight at the slaughter of people a world away jumping to their doom from the 93rd floor. Take a deep breath and smell the money from Iraq being handed to the "martyr's" family after he blows himself up in a Tel Aviv market. This is no game.

Hussein was caged but his roar could still frighten. No, he didn't order the 9/11 attacks. No, he was unable to attack Israel or his other neighbors with nukes or germs or nerve gas. But he liked what he saw happen in New York and the Pentagon. His ultimate dream would have included the genocidal slaughter of every Jew, every-where; every American, any-where. He had to go, period.

President Bush will pay a political price for getting everyone's hopes up that he was bringing a tyrant to justice for scoffing at the orders of the United Nations; that the U.S. was protecting the free world from a menace of "unique urgency." The weapons of mass destruction would have been a great argument for war IF ONLY those darn thing could be found. Even with the WMD case laid before the U.N. and a unanimous statement that "serious consequences" would follow if Iraq did not disarm, major allies weren't convinced that war couldn't wait. Now the "I told you so's" are deafening.

Of course Bush couldn't wait. The army couldn't wait for the full heat of summer to attack. The election season couldn't wait for the commander-in-chief to be second guessed by the democratic party caucuses while conducting major combat operations. Kuwait and Israel couldn't wait for Saddam to reconstitute his weapons programs, or find a place to hide them. The men and women at the Pentagon couldn't wait to try out some of their latest gadgets and wreck some "kick-ass" on people who looked like the vermin who drove a plane into the side of their building. America couldn't wait while the President did nothing to squash the dictator that should have been destroyed by the President's dad.

Hussein was left in charge of Baghdad because the first President Bush didn't think it would be prudent to go beyond the UN mandate to repel the invaders from Kuwait -- "not gonna do it." The second Bush did not serve as a UN ambassador and did not have any lingering respect for the institution. Indeed he all but proved the UN to be irrelevant, at least where the decision to use B-1 bombers is concerned. Prudent, no: not for someone who wants the trust an cooperation of friendly nations to hunt down and destroy terrorists; not when spending uncounted billions of dollars on an overseas adventure during a recession; not for someone who wants to be reelected some day. However, prudence should be demanded of someone who sends out our children to be killed while killing other children.

It's fantastic that Hussein is gone without having to turn the desert into radioactive glass, but Osama better be served up on a plate before November or else. Even if he is found the opposition will cry foul. But this will probably be the legacy of this administration: the glass half empty, but tasty nonetheless -- recovery but no jobs, domestic security but no privacy, tax cuts but no revenue enhancement; supply-side support but no trickle-down, record deficits but no spending restraint, medicare reform but no cost savings, education reform but no funding, marriage but no homosexuals, veto power but not a single veto, honorable discharge but no records, election but no majority, war but no WMD's.


Mark W. Adams, Esq.
Attorney at Law
--Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny-- Edmund Burke