Charles Finch

President Bush's recent press conference about the NIE findings on Iran contained as serious a lie as any he has told. At least credible people thought Iraq might have nuclear weapons, whatever the administration's fictions were in the build-up to that war. But for Bush to raise the specter of World War III in October, months after he knew Iran had halted its nuclear program, may be the most irresponsible act of the most irresponsible presidency in our country's history. As Joe Biden says, "I refuse to believe that. If that's true, he has the most incompetent staff in modern American history." Was it all just to live up to the flimsy, bullying rhetoric that set the precedent for that World War III speech: his absurd identification of an "Axis of Evil" in 2002?

We live in dark times, perhaps even more dangerous from within than without.