(Originally posted to Iraq at EraBlog on Tue, 18 Mar 2003 06:41:46 GMT)

Almost, but not quite, at war with Iraq. Saddam has forty-eight hours to quit Iraq and avert war, but no-one expects him to do that. Feh.

I would feel slightly better about the new war if Bush had managed to forge a broad-based coalition. Instead, in their heavy­hand­ed way, Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Perle have managed to piss off most of the world.

Paul Glastris has a good article in Slate about how Bush repeatedly botched the op­por­tu­ni­ties to get the UN and NATO on board, in contrast with Clinton in Kosovo and his own father for the first Gulf War.