Stardate 20020524.1317

(Captain's log): I don't like war. I'd love it if my nation never had to fight another, if no-one who is a citizen of my nation ever again had to put himself in harm's way to protect us or advance our political goals.

Alas, I don't believe that can be avoided. War is bad, but other things are worse, and sometimes war is the least bad alternative. I believe that is the situation we face with respect to Iraq.

Iraq has chemical weapons and has used them against Iran, and also against Kurds within Iraqi borders. Iraq has a program to develop biological weapons, and it has in the past had a program to develop nuclear weapons. Much of that was dismantled during the interval of inspections before the government of Iraq kicked all the inspectors out and refused to cooperate any longer, and what might have happened since then is anyone's guess. But assuming that nothing has happened and that Saddam has given up his ambition to develop nukes would be foolish in the extreme.

In the last 20 years, Saddam has gone to war twice against neighboring nations, without provocation, and engaged in brutal military crackdowns within his own borders both against the Kurds and against Arabs in the southern part of the nation.

In violation of the ceasefire terms which terminated hostilities in the Gulf War, he has moved anti-aircraft weaponry (guns and missiles and radar) into the no-fly zones in both northern and southern Iraq, and they have been taking shots at American and British planes for years.

Iraq has been funneling substantial resources to the Palestinians, including paying huge amounts of money to the families of anyone who dies in a suicide bombing of Israel. During the Gulf War, Iraq fired Scud missiles at Israel, armed with high explosives. Some Scuds were found and destroyed after the war, but there is no question at all that Iraq still retains a substantial number of them, and that they could be armed when next used with chemical or even nuclear warheads.

All approaches short of fullscale war to eliminate him or neutralize him have failed. He is a major danger, and he is grooming a son to take over for him when he dies. By all accounts the son is even more dangerous.

The Baath regime in Iraq must be eliminated. President Bush has been saying for months now that we were going to take Saddam out.

Now it seems as if we're stepping back from that. There are conflicting reports: WaPo says that the Pentagon has been trying to talk the White House out of attacking Iraq. The NYTimes says that the reason is that a wargame run there suggested that it would stress our military to the limit. Mark Steyn and John Derbyshire say that Bush has given up on the idea.

What I'm seeing happen is very confusing, and is susceptible to a number of possible explanations, but right now I'm not sure which is the real one. They're more or less divided into "Undecided", "Later" and "Never" types, for various reasons.

• Never because of risk aversion. In some ways, the overwhelming victories in 1991 and recently in Afghanistan actually do us disservice; it raises the expectation that it should be possible to always fight wars with negligible casualties among our own forces. It may be that we have the ability to fight and win in Iraq but not without substantial casualties, and either the White House or the Pentagon are afraid of a big American body-count. I don't think that this is a fear shared by the American people, at least now. But as time goes on, and urgency and anger about last September subside, that willingness to sacrifice will also subside. Regardless, it may be the case that our leaders are not willing to pay the price in blood of winning.

If so, that is short sighted because it ignores the potential price in blood of not taking Saddam out. If we don't go to him, he'll come to us. The next attack will make the WTC look like a wet firecracker.

• Never because we can't actually do it. Another possibility is that we don't actually have the capability to fight and win that war. If this is true then we have a major scandal on our hands. We've been spending vast amounts of money for decades supposedly to create and maintain the finest and most powerful military on earth, and now that we need them why aren't they capable of doing what we need done?

I don't think this is the case. I think we do have the ability to do this. But it may take decisions about reducing commitments in some places to raise the force needed for this. One complaint that the Pentagon is reportedly making to the White House is that its capabilities have been spread too far to cover various defensive problems, and thus cannot be concentrated for this war.

That may be true. If so, there are two particular commitments we can eliminate. First would be to withdraw most of our ground forces from Europe. There is really no longer any good reason for us to maintain two divisions in Germany, one of them armored.

Second would be to stand down the air protection in the US proper. Since last September we have maintained the ability to intercept and shoot down any airliner which might