chirac goes bush

Today, Jacques Chirac all but declared war on Iran. The French president made a fine U-turn with respect to 2003 and is now fully in line with George WMD Bush. Chirac promised to use his nukes, so splendidly tested in the South Pacific in the mid-1990s, to free the world of rogue states. And first in line these days is, of course, Iran, whose president discovered, shortly after being elected, that he has absolutely nothing to offer to his eager people but savage words directed at a vilified world. He is desparately trying to distract Iranians from the misery in their country and quell their anger at tyrrany and religious vice.

Big talk and ruthless oppression are nothing new around the world, except this guy is building a bomb. The German secret service reported - since when do secret services report? - that he might only be a few months short of his goal. This is much more than the infamous 45 minutes that Blair, oddly quiet these days, claimed of Iraq three years ago, but all the more believable. At the rate things are going, there can be no doubt that something cataclysmic will happen. I have no desire to imagine what the Middle East will look like if Iran and the Western world, and Israel as an obvious first target, will duke it out on the nuclear battle field. All the wars, aggression, terror attacks, and every-day atrocities that the region has seen in the last 60 years will look like a Sunday at the beach in comparison.