Congress backs Bush war powers. Both houses of the US Congress give President Bush authority to use force against Iraq - if he believes diplomatic efforts have failed. [BBC News | Front Page]

IF he believed diplomatic efforts have failed?  I don't suppose there's any chance he won't come to that conclusion, is there?

I'm not the least bit surprised by this turn of events, but I am disturbed by it - coming as it does the day after the director of the CIA released a letter stating that they do not believe it is likely that Iraq would initiate an attack against us, unless they believe that it is inevitable that we will be attacking them.

I remember the night the first Gulf War began.  I was driving home from work when the DJ came on with the news that we had launched air strikes at Baghdad.  Nothing had felt more terrifying in my life.  I was too young to have any real recollection of the Vietnam War, and the few scuffles we'd had during my life time - Panama and Granada - seemed to be more of a non-event than anything that made me feel at all at risk. 

Shooting at Iraq, however, was a different story - and when he began firing back at at Israel, not only was I scared, but I was confused.  I didn't understand the whole Middle East situation at all back then (not to say that I'm any kind of an expert now), so why he'd shoot at someone who wasn't shooting at him just made it that much more frightening. By the time I got home from work, I was in tears.  I turned on the TV - I'd left it on MTV which is what I'd been watching before I left - and the first thing I saw was the "star-studded" version of John Lennon's "Give Peace a Chance".  I wasn't able to sleep at all that night

This time around, I doubt I'll be as freaked out.  I'm a decade older, I've been through one "war" (if you can call it that when you, yourself, are never in any danger....  for the soldiers in the Gulf area, it was a War, for me it was a patriotic TV show), an I'm less paranoid than I had been.  But I AM still uneasy.  I don't really understand why it's so important to attack Saddam now - the report that was cited as proof he was near to being able to make nuclear weapons has been declared non-existant by the entity cited as having published it; the CIA doesn't think he's a first-strike threat; there are a large number of governments who commit abuses against their populations, but we're not planning to attack all of them; and he's not currently being aggressive towards any of his neighbors.  That pretty much leaves oil and that "this is the man who tried to kill my Dad". 

A friend of mine is in the Air Force reserve.  He mainly flies fuel tankers, but he could, conceivably, be sent to Iraq at some point.  I don't know that I think money and a personal vendetta is sufficient cause to risk his life - much less the lives of all of the thousands of other soldiers who will have to go "over there" to protect the oil company interests and help satisfy Bush's blood lust.