Bush is going to war. Yet he still doesn't know how, when, or why

AS recently as January 9 this year, the Independent newspaper in Britain quoted a Pentagon official who stated that, after Afghanistan, the United States would “turn the focus of its anti-terror offensive to countries such as Somalia, Yemen, the Philippines and Indonesia, but not against Iraq”.

Yet within a matter of weeks, President Bush identified Iraq as part of an “axis of evil” and toppling the regime of Saddam Hussein suddenly re-emerged as an urgent international priority.

Such a dramatic turnaround in policy clearly owed little to events in Iraq itself. After all, no links had been established between Iraq and al-Qaida or the terrorist attacks on September 11.