"There is still some intense fighting to be done, especially out in the west," he said. "We should not be surprised if one of these mornings we wake up and . . . there has been a major firefight with some casualties or a significant terrorist attack that kills significant numbers of people."

Sanchez said the US-led forces are engaging resistance groups 15 to 20 times a day, on average, with as many as 25 incidents on some days. Military spokesmen have consistently cited lower figures, about 13 a day.

The general added that the resistance was showing signs of improved organization. Though most attacks against US forces are being carried out by small, locally based groups apparently acting on their own, there are indications that the resistance is beginning to operate under a broader, more regional control, Sanchez said.

At the United Nations, Secretary General Kofi Annan told a closed-door gathering of Security Council members that the world body must be given a leading role in shaping Iraq's political transition or it would not be involved in the nation at all, according to several diplomats and UN officials who attended the meeting. Annan has been seeking a major role for the UN in helping Iraqis draft a constitution and hold elections.

The discovery will not cause a complete breach of French-U.S. relations -- unless, of course, it is discovered that Paris did in fact sell the weapons to Iraq in early 2003 -- not impossible, but unlikely. What it will do is help the U.S outflank France in the Security Council and further erode French global influence.

Could we have contained this indefinitely? If we'd wanted to continue to starve an entire country, make a mockery of U.N. resolutions, give new life to one of the most vicious dictatorships on the planet, and leave open the risk of this shadow but viable WMD program coming into the hands of any terrorist faction Saddam wanted to entertain. Were there risks of action? You bet. But most of the enormous risks did not come about: no use of such weapons, no massive destruction of oil wells, no fracturing of the country, no terrorist revenge or resurgence.

Indeed, Le Monde, which normally makes French ambitions, or distress about their failures, synonymous with Europe's, made some rare admissions this week about the French descent in Europe's eyes.

Daniel Vernet, a former senior editor of the newspaper, wrote, 'We often irritate our partners because too frequently we have the tendency to want to impose our views, or only to consider as truly European those positions that conform to a French vision, however much in the EU minority it may be.'

That resulted in a dilemma without an obvious exit, Vernet said. 'The European partners don't want to hear about European policy independent from the United States,' he wrote. 'So, either France acts alone, and, regardless of what's claimed, its influence remains limited. Or it seeks a common denominator with its partners and it has to give up its ambitions....'

....Of all the books, the current No. 2 on the bestseller list of L'Express, "La France Qui Tombe," by Nicolas Baverez, has been the focus of unusual attention.

Baverez, a practicing attorney and economist who has a strong place in the Paris establishment, argues that France's leadership hates change. Rather, it "cultivates the status quo and rigidity" because it is run through the connivance of politicians, civil servants and union officials, bringing together both the left- and right-wing elites. They are described as mainly concerned with preserving the failed statist system that protects their jobs and status....


....For [Baverez], France is threatened with becoming a museum diplomatically and a transit center economically. To do anything about it, it must revive itself internally first, getting away from what he calls its "social statist model." To advance, it must end the dominant role of a 'public sector placed outside of any constraint requiring productivity or competitiveness.'

No one is close to proving anything at this point, of course, and Karl Rove
might be the victim of unwarranted accusations. From the Democrats' point of
view, the uncertainty makes this moment all the sweeter. The same folks who
hated the special prosecutor under Clinton now demand a special prosecutor
for this case -- fair enough, since the people who loved Clinton's special
prosecutor are now adamantly opposed to the one for Bush. It all evens out.


What doesn't even out is this. The United States is engaged in a global war
so far from over it's more like a cave than a tunnel -- forget, for now,
seeing a light at the end of it. Bipartisanship has completely collapsed and
we have moved from grudging consensus to calls for prosecutors to
investigate felonies. The situation is now completely out of hand. U.S.
elections have been held during wars, but it is difficult to remember a
wartime election this rough and destructive. The elections of 1968 and 1972
were not this far gone a year away from election day. We guess that we'd
have to go back to 1864 to see something similar.


The problem is this. The administration has held to the WMD line for so long
that it has become a separate dogma that can neither be defended, nor
abandoned. Regardless of whether Rove blew the agent, adhering to a
disproved claim in the hopes that no one will notice is not only a bad
idea -- it isn't working. At some point the White House must come to grips
with the fact that its WMD strategy just isn't flying. There was a reason
for invading Iraq. It wasn't WMD. Get on with the war.


On the other side, Washington has become so used to government-by-scandal
that even wartime necessities can't stop it. Trying to destroy Bill Clinton
or Robert Bork or any of the innumerable public figures savaged during
peacetime is one thing. It is quite another to do so during war. It seems to
us that if Karl Rove is guilty, then he should be hung from a tree. His
action is unforgivable. But -- and this is the crucial point -- discrediting
a sitting president during war is very risky. Even Pearl Harbor wasn't
investigated until the war was under control.


In other words (we would apologize for editorializing, but we aren't
journalists, so no apology needed) -- this is a wonderful time for both
sides to cut it out. The White House should admit what we all know -- they
screwed up on the WMD issue, or lied. It's one or the other, and the Bush
administration is not getting out of this without paying a price. The
Democrats should bear in mind that the United States is at war and that
there is a difference between winning the White House and destroying it.
There is a war on, dammit.


The only winner in all of this is Osama bin Laden. It's beginning to look
like his analysis of the United States was shrewder than it might originally
have appeared. The United States is self-destructive. Just give it a little
push, and Washington will tear itself apart.

How big a secret was it? It was well known around Washington that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA. Republican activist Clifford May wrote Monday, in National Review Online, that he had been told of her identity by a non-government source before my column appeared and that it was common knowledge. Her name, Valerie Plame, was no secret either, appearing in Wilson's 'Who's Who in America' entry.

The pro-government daily reports Kuwaiti security forces foiled an attempted smuggling of $60 million worth of chemical weapons and biological warheads from Iraq to an unnamed European country.
Citing an unnamed security source, Al-Siyassah said the smugglers had been under surveillance since they arrived in Kuwait and were arrested 'in due time.'

And this administration comes in with an ideology that blocks its ability to see, articulate, and resolve those problems. It's an ideology that's a sharpened sort of right-wing Republican party ideology. It has no real intellectual base to it. It's just the ideology of a party. By intellectual base, I'm talking first, trickle-down economics. No reputable economist stands up and says, 'Trickle down economics really works.' Because we know the marginal propensity to consume of people who are making $100,000 a year and less is much higher than the marginal propensity to consume of people who are making $350,000 a year and more.

So therefore when you say you're going to give money to the rich so they'll make jobs for the poor -- that's not a very efficient way of producing jobs in the American economy.

Take Mr. Wilson himself, who has been much in evidence on national television screens since this weekend. Could he have an agenda beyond demanding justice?
Well, what would you think of someone who tells people around Washington — as Mr. Wilson did last week — "Neo-conservatives and religious conservatives have hijacked this administration, and I consider myself on a personal mission to destroy both."
That sounds pretty ugly, doesn't it? It is in fact quite a bit at odds with the reasonable image that Mr. Wilson has been projecting on our television screens in recent days. Mr. Wilson also saw fit back in August to aaccuse presidential adviser Karl Rove of having orchestrated the White House leak. He swore he would see Mr. Rove led out of there "in handcuffs." Now, he says he got carried away by passion and is in possession of no evidence that Mr. Rove was involved.

Opponents of the Bush tax cuts often claim 'tax cuts for the rich' occurs at the expense of the poor. But several recent studies show that these are not static groups, and that people frequently move in and out of the 'poor' and 'rich' demographics. Many of those categorized as poor are young people beginning their careers or unemployed people briefly out of the workforce. Similarly, many of those who are 'rich' today will stop earning high incomes in future years. The number of people who will gain much from the tax cuts in their lifetimes is far higher than the number who benefit in any year, because of this income mobility.

It would not be the first time that the inner contradictions of a civilization, taken to their limit, have killed it. Something in the expansionist and militant hubris of 19th century Europe led the continent to the mindless mud and trenches of the Great War. The Lost Generation died by Europe's own hand. Now it is Islam coming face to face with a challenge of how to handle the true divine fire. And the real dilemma is that the power behind the light of the stars is incompatible with the framework bequeathed by Mohammed. It may be the turn of the Faithful to die by Islam's own hand unless it can listen to the word that speaks from the very heart of the flame.

And that message, surprisingly, is that we must love one another or die. J. Robert Oppenheimer thought, as he beheld the fireball of the first atomic test at Alamogordo, that he heard the Hindu god Shiva whisper 'I am become death, the destroyer of worlds'. He understood at that moment that mankind's moral capacity would have to expand to match its technical prowess or it would perish. If Islam desires the secret of the stars it must embrace the kuffar as its brother -- or die.