Airstrip One

What's happening to the Telegraph?

Conrad, Conrad, your newspaper is deserting you. Yet another sensible piece, this time by John Casey, saying that a war on Iraq is, well, stupid. The best part is this:

So it comes down to weapons of mass destruction. Do we know that Saddam has rebuilt his armoury of chemical and biological weapons? Several members of the United Nations inspection teams deny this. Few objective observers think Saddam is anywhere near getting nuclear weapons - but he would obviously love to have them.

Does that justify war? One of Aquinas's conditions for a just war is that one's enemy has committed a "fault" - that is, done one an injury. The possession of particular technologies is not in itself a "fault". The question is what Iraq intends to do with them. The notion that it intends to attack America is patently ridiculous. Israel? Israel is one of the most formidable fighting machines in the world, and could pulverise Iraq, using its own weapons of mass destruction if necessary.

That Aquinas bit was what I've been stumbling towards. The warriors will have to prove that they are either a threat or that they have done us an injury. Cheering it on because we have the better weapons or that it will be a "cakewalk" is nothing more than crude barbarism.