Mick Hume has an interesting take on Dubya's obsession with Iraq and what may be behind it. There is no question Saddam is one of the bad guys, but more of a threat now than before? I don't see the evidence and it appears I'm not alone.

"After Afghanistan, the Bush administration 'will turn the focus of its anti-terror offensive to countries such as Somalia, Yemen, the Philippines and Indonesia, but not against Iraq'. Who says so? A 'top Pentagon official', speaking in early January 2002 (1).

Six months later, Iraq has gone from being a footnote in the 'war against terror' to topping America's global agenda, with weekly leaks and hints about plans for an invasion to topple Saddam Hussein.

What's changed? There don't seem to have been any significant developments concerning Iraq itself. UK prime minister Tony Blair, Bush's firmest European supporter, now concedes that there is no convincing evidence linking Saddam to 11 September or al-Qaeda. He has also noticeably failed to publish the promised 'damning dossier' showing that Saddam is producing weapons of mass destruction, after MPs given private briefings were reportedly unimpressed with the evidence...

Yet ever since President Bush made his 'axis of evil' speech at the end of January, Iraq has once more become America's public enemy number one, with much talk of an attack to remove Saddam by early next year. There is less evidence of Saddam manufacturing weapons of mass destruction than of Washington manufacturing pretexts for an offensive."

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