Dr. Strangelove with a Texas drawl

Last week was not a good one for the Bush administration's crusade against evil. First came news of the government-issued visas for two of the 9/11 hijackers. Next, much ballyhooed Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan turned out to be a dud. Only a handful of al-Qaida or Taliban fighters - and 14 civilians - were killed, at a cost of eight Americans dead and over 40 wounded. Hundreds of other al-Qaida/Taliban once again escaped to fight another day.

Worse, exiled King Zahir Shah, whom America intends to restore to the throne of Afghanistan, said the U.S.-led war in his nation was "stupid and useless" and should be called off. The U.S. media ignored this damning comment.

While the U.S. and its allies swatted shadows in Afghanistan, the Mideast was spinning out of control. Palestinian suicide bombers killed scores of Israeli civilians. Twenty thousand Israeli troops and 100 tanks rampaged through Palestinian territory, killing over 100 civilians and fighters in scenes that recalled the 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising or Soviet tanks in Budapest in 1956. A recent poll showed a shocking 40% of Israelis favoured ethnic cleansing of Arabs from the West Bank and Gaza.