" We may find that our self-defense requires further actions with respect to other organizations and other states." --Ambassador John Negroponte's letter to the United Nations Security Council, reporting measures taken by the United States in the exercise of its right of self-defense, pursuant to Article 51 of the U.N. Charter. THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION SPENT most of Monday afternoon dismissing the notion that the Negroponte letter signaled likely military action beyond Afghanistan in the near future, claiming the verbiage cited above was boilerplate to preserve U.S. options later on. Still, it's striking language, especially coming at a time when the administration is trying to restrict its public discussion of military action to the case of Afghanistan, if only for the sake of not roiling the coalition. And the president and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have also, in the last couple of days, been surprisingly forthcoming about the possibility of eventual military moves beyond Afghanistan. What's going on? Has the administration come around thanks to repeated efforts at persuasion by The Weekly Standard (and a few other hawks)? Perhaps. But a likelier explanation is that they have come to believe we'll have to take the war beyond Afghanistan--to Iraq and other state sponsors of terror--because they've found evidence of support by "other states" for very recent and sinister bin Laden-related activities. What if the anthrax cases in Florida are an act of terrorism? What if the presence of the anthrax spores there is connected to the fact that a few of the September 11 terrorists, led by Mohammed Atta, lived within a few miles? What if Atta--or some other bin Laden operative--had access to anthrax from the terrorist-sponsoring country that we know has a long record of developing anthrax as a biological weapon, Iraq? Atta reportedly met with one or more Iraqi agents in Prague in June 2000 just before flying to the United States--itself an extraordinary act unless there was something to coordinate with Iraq. Atta presumably also met with other collaborators on his final trip to Europe in July 2001, after which he returned to the United States and to South Florida. In other words, the discovery in a Florida office building of anthrax--the Iraq-favored biological agent--may be all the explanation we need for why the administration is beginning to warn that actions could be required against "other states." William Kristol is editor of The Weekly Standard. Update: Read the insightful article "Does Harvard Hate America?" at The Project for Conservative Reform.
And check out John Podhoretz's excellent New York Post column, "Beyond bin Laden."
