Stephen F. Hayes

GIVE JOHN KERRY CREDIT. It takes guts to accuse someone of lying when that someone has said essentially what you have been saying for a decade. Which is what John Kerry did last week when he told a gathering of antiwar Democrats in New Hampshire that President George W. Bush "misled every one of us" in making the case for war in Iraq. Kerry called for a full investigation--a rather peculiar request from someone who sounds so certain about its outcome.

Kerry isn't alone. More and more Democrats are going the way of the French.

MUCH HAS BEEN SAID and written in recent weeks about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. As the methodical search for those weapons continues in Iraq, the back-and-forth in the United States and Europe about their whereabouts has gone ballistic--with hysterical, unfounded accusations leveled by critics of the war and increasing defensiveness by the Bush administration.

There are two elements to the current debate: substance and politics.

AS FIERCE FIGHTING in southern Iraq claimed the lives of coalition fighters in early April, Ali Moh'd Kamal, the marketing director for al Jazeera, defended his network's willingness to show British and American soldiers captured by the Iraqis.

"This is the first time the Arab media have had the upper hand on the western media," he told the Mirror, a London newspaper.

He was right, of course.

PAUL BREMER, the new civilian administrator of Iraq, arrived in the Middle East on Sunday, May 11. The same day, the front page of the Washington Post announced that Barbara Bodine, an American diplomat in charge of postwar Baghdad, would be leaving. On May 13, the controversial interim health minister, a man with deep ties to Saddam Hussein's Baath party, quit his post under pressure after just 10 days. The next day, the Pentagon announced that 15,000 more U.S. troops would head to Iraq to restore order.

AH, FAIRNESS. Just when you thought the New York Times might have abandoned that quaint principle of journalism, faith is restored. Mine was, anyway, after reading this passage from Douglas Jehl's April 19 story.

"Bush administration officials have long expressed concern that Syria is developing chemical weapons and about its support for organizations the United States considers terrorist, including Hezbollah and the Palestinian groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad."

"The United States considers terrorist."

Of course, pretty much everyone considers these groups terrorist.

Editor's note, 1/30/04: On January 25, 2004, a daily newspaper in Iraq called al Mada published a list of individuals and organizations who it says received oil from the now-deposed regime. Among those listed is Shakir al Khafaji, an Iraqi-American from Detroit, who ran "Expatriate Conferences" for the regime in Baghdad.

ACCORDING TO pre-Islamic Alawi belief, people at first were stars in the world of light, but fell from celestial orbit through disobedience. Faithful Alawis believe they must be transformed seven times before returning to take their place among the stars. Syria's rookie Alawite president, Bashar Assad, son of the "Lion of Damascus," Hafez Assad, appears about to fall out of celestial orbit by provoking a showdown with the United States.

Safat, Kuwait

MUCH HAS BEEN MADE in recent days of the fact that coalition forces have not yet found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Umm Qasr, Iraq

Umm Qasr, Iraq

FOR MOST AMERICANS, the Iraqi missile attack on Kuwait City early Saturday morning represented a new stage in the current war. This one got through. All twelve missiles previously fired from Iraq into Kuwait had been intercepted by U.S. Patriot missiles. That, at least, was the official Pentagon line.

"At this point, a total of 12 missiles have been fired," said Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks, at the CENTCOM briefing on Friday, hours before the latest Iraqi missile attack.