Well, well, well. The thorny poison tree of the Bush presidency is beginning to bear fruit Just a note. I would point out that writer James Fallow (see: The Atlantic Monthly, Nov. 2002) predicted much of what we're witnessing in Iraq today and, I daresay, some of what we're going to see forthcoming.

He talked about the spiraling costs to American taxpayers and how the administration would have to walk a fine line to convince the Congress that the price would be worth the outcome. Fallow also suggested that we would see a loss of security - not the improved, safer world Bush would have us believe he could deliver by killing Saddam Hussein; and he wrote that the unfounded 'facts' the administration was pushing to convince the U.S. public and the world that Saddam posed an imminent threat to peace and security (there's that word again) would ultimately prove to be untrue. All week long the media has reported former and active intelligence personnel saying that the Bushmeister had an agenda and wanted only intel that supported his determination to go get Saddam. But the CIA and other covert agencies were unable to confirm ties to al-Qaida; unable to confirm a shadowy deal between Saddam and ANY other nation to purchase nuclear materials for the purpose of building a bomb; in short, unable to provide any substantive data that supported the contention that Saddam, bastard that he is (or was, whichever the case may be) presented a viable threat to anyone other than the poor folks who lived beneath his fat behind.

And now Bush is ducking and running fast as he can, shoving scapegoats over the proverbial cliff fast as he can to avoid answering the questions posed to him these past several days. And I do believe that Bush wanted to topple Saddam for the sole reason that the Iraqi tyrant attempted to kill his daddy (we talk that way in Texas, you know, "My daddy," and "My MeeMaw" - meaning grandmother - no matter what the age of the speaker).

It is a frightening thought to believe that the most powerful office in the world could be inhabited by an immature, impulsive, slow-thinking nitwit like Bush '43 but here we are.

Check out Fallow's feature and you'll find that much of the downside to the whole Iraq issue, you know, the doubts and questions we're hearing about today, was already known by academics, intelligence agents and writers of note months before we put U.S. soldiers on Iraqi soil; soldiers who now are dying at a rate of one per day and who will be dying, I fear, at an ever-growing rate the longer we stay.

But rest assured, we're going to stay. We simply can't get out of the mire now that we're there. We would appear to be ill-mannered bullies to the rest of the world were we to simply pick up and go home and leave Iraq to its own devices. And of course there's the little matter of Bush's pledge to create a democratic society in Iraq, despite all the evidence that suggests pulling off that pipe-dream is as likely as - well, as likely as Bush's premise for toppling Saddam's regime was true.

And where is Saddam? What is it that we don't know that the president does? Plenty, I'm sure. Why is it that two of the most wanted men in the world - wanted, at least, by this administration - can fall off the face of the earth? Our national apparatus for security seems inept and unable to perform when it comes to very wealthy terrorists. We can bomb the daylights out of sheep herders and tribal clans. We can wipe out thousands of people in a few minutes using high-tech explosives that fly straight to the target. But we seem unable to locate Saddam Hussein and his offspring. Nor can we find Osama bin Laden. I wonder if money has changed hands - protection money, let's say?

Find that thought deplorable, unlikely or repugnant? Wish I could say I do but the fact is, I find it all too plausible. In fact, I'll say probable.

We have satellites that can read a license plate from 100 miles away - a license plate! But we can't seem to follow the movements of two of the world's most treacherous killers. This suggests to me that the old adage, 'Where there's a will there's a way' holds true. Conversely, where there's no will, well then, no way.