Esquire - Ron Reagan on why bush has to go.

Esquire:Feature Story:The Case Against George W. Bush: "During his campaign for the presidency, Mr. Bush pledged a more 'humble' foreign policy. 'I would take the use of force very seriously,' he said. 'I would be guarded in my approach.' Other countries would resent us 'if we're an arrogant nation.' He sniffed at the notion of 'nation building.' 'Our military is meant to fight and win wars. . . . And when it gets overextended, morale drops.' International cooperation and consensus building would be the cornerstone of a Bush administration's approach to the larger world. Given candidate Bush's remarks, it was hard to imagine him, as president, flipping a stiff middle finger at the world and charging off adventuring in the Middle East.

But didn't 9/11 reshuffle the deck, changing everything? Didn't Mr. Bush, on September 12, 2001, awaken to the fresh realization that bad guys in charge of Islamic nations constitute an entirely new and grave threat to us and have to be ruthlessly confronted lest they threaten the American homeland again? Wasn't Saddam Hussein rushed to the front of the line because he was complicit with the hijackers and in some measure responsible for the atrocities in Washington, D. C., and at the tip of Manhattan?

Well, no.

As Bush's former Treasury secretary, Paul O'Neill, and his onetime 'terror czar,' Richard A. Clarke, have made clear, the president, with the enthusiastic encouragement of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, was contemplating action against Iraq from day one. 'From the start, we were building the case against Hussein and looking at how we could take him out,' O'Neill said. All they needed was an excuse. "