The EU says that we can't go into Iraq without UN approval.

Well, I guess that settles it. Might as well have the ships turn back.

More and more, as I look across the Atlantic, it seems to be through a looking glass.

There seem to be multiple delusions going on here. First of all, we already have UN approval. SCR 1441 was carefully crafted by Powell to ensure that was the case. But the Europeans continue to fantasize that there is a need for another resolution (one that the French can therefore block by veto), when they lost that battle in October.

I guess that they're in denial. If they were to no longer believe this, they'd have to confront the reality that they've made themselves utterly irrelevant. They'd no longer be able to pretend that they were players on the stage of world events.

But here are the other major delusions:

Prime Minister Costas Simitis of Greece, EU president until the end of June, said a war would harm peace and stability in the Middle East.

Speaking after a meeting with visiting Romanian Prime Minister Adrian Nastase, Simitis said:

"We both estimate that peace (in Iraq) must be preserved. We both believe a conflict will result in delaying many developments and is a conflict that will not benefit stability and peace in the region."

This supposes that "stability" is a positive attribute in a hellhole. After all, a grave is stable.

It also postulates that there is some existing "peace" in Iraq that is preservable, and that it is desirable to preserve it.

Take the second first. Can a country whose government terrorizes its own citizens, that has Al Qaeda guerillas attacking the northern parts nightly (the parts not under Saddam's control), be properly said to be at peace? Not in my book. There will be no peace in Iraq as long as Saddam or one of his partners in monstrousness are in power there, and as long as Al Qaeda has safe haven in Iran from which to attack the Kurds in the north.

The Middle East is not at peace now, and will not be until there are wholesale changes in governments there. Thus, stability is not our friend, because it's the stability of constant warfare by the regional governments against their own people (and particularly their women), some of which spills over into attacks on us, as we saw a year and a half ago.

We want to, we must destabilize the present Middle East--it's the only hope of restabilizing it into something that offers hope for its inhabitants, and true peace, for us as well as them. As the old saying goes, sometimes, the only way out is through.

The Eurocrats who would perpetuate the notions described above are not contributing to peace, any more than did Neville Chamberlain sixty five years ago. Their course of delay and obfuscate would just make the ultimate necessary outcome much more difficult and costly in human lives, as did his.

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