On the bombing in Iraq

In attacking the U.N. headquarters, and in assassinating Sergio Vieira de Mello, their representative in Baghdad, the Iraqi terrorists have a double objective in mind. First of all, to demonstrate that the Anglo-American occupation forces are powerless to oppose their strategy of chaos. Secondly, to terrify the international community so that it doesn't run for the help of Bush...

It's perhaps a turning point. War is continuing, three months after the American President declared it over. The Americans, either through lack of preparation, ignorance or arrogance, have lost the chance they had to conquer 'the hearts and minds' of the Iraqi masses, and to improve their living conditions, once subject to the downcast tyranny of Saddam...

Yet to abandon Iraq to civil war, dictatorship or chaos would be the worst of solutions. Sept. 11 demonstrated the danger that drifting states constitute, as was (and remains) an example in Afghanistan, and now an example Iraq is in the process of becoming...