Kristol's Unwelcome Message

CERNOBBIO, Italy -- Kristol's War, as it will henceforth be called, was declared after dinner here at the splendid Villa D'Este hotel on Lake Como. He announced a vast U.S. foreign policy agenda, beginning with a war against Iraq and ending with replacing the monarchy in Saudi Arabia. His audience of mostly Europeans at first gasped and then reacted with irritation. "Very provocative," many of them commented -- a polite way of saying that he, and by extension the Bush administration, was totally mad.