PRESIDENT BUSH has offered three reasons why the United States should launch a pre-emptive attack against Iraq. But on close inspection, they just don't hold up. Take a look.

Saddam Hussein is our greatest threat: Daniel Ellsberg, the career Pentagon official who released the Pentagon Papers in 1971, is an expert on government secrecy. His new book, "Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers" recounts the government deception that kept the American people from knowing the truth about the Vietnam War.

In the current issue of the trade magazine Editor and Publisher, Ellsberg now says that "this government, like in Vietnam, is lying us into a war. Like Vietnam, it's a reckless unnecessary war, where the risks greatly outweigh any possible benefits."

We've been told that Hussein represents the greatest danger to U.S. security. To this, Ellsberg responds, "More dangerous than al Qaeda? North Korea? Russian nukes loose in the world? An India-Pakistan war?"

Iraq has weapons of mass destruction: We've also been told that we must invade Iraq to reduce the threat of weapons of mass destruction. But CIA Director George Tenet has told Congress that Hussein would only use such weapons if he were attacked. Inspections, moreover, have so far failed to uncover any nuclear weapons program, even though they have raised questions about other hidden weapons.

Iraq is a ruthless dictatorship, but it is our country that is lowering the threshold for using nuclear weapons. According to reports published in the Los Angeles Times, the Bush administration is considering using tactical nuclear arms if American troops are attacked with chemical weapons and employing "bunker-busters," small nuclear weapons, to destroy deeply buried targets that may be impervious to conventional bombs.

Ellsberg is not surprised. "Based on my years of experience within government and familiarity with such scenarios, let me say I am certain we have contingency plans for use of nuclear weapons in response to a successful use of gas against our troops."

Blurring the line between conventional and nuclear weapons is a terrible precedent, argues William M. Arkin, a former Army intelligence analyst and now a commentator, who interviewed military officials and reviewed planning documents. "The danger is that nuclear weapons -- locked away in a Pandora's box for more than half a century -- are being taken out of that lockbox and put on the shelf with everything else."

We should install democracy in Iraq: We've also been told an invasion of Iraq is necessary to promote democracy. But according to Michael Klare, professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and author of "Resource Wars," that is another falsehood. In the 1980s, when Iraq was the enemy of our enemy, Iran, the United States eagerly embraced Hussein's dictatorship. Donald Rumsfeld even personally met Hussein in 1983 to give him secret satellite data on Iranian military positions.

America's support of post-Soviet dictatorships in Azerbaijan, Kazakstan and Uzbekistan, not to mention Saudi Arabia, doesn't support the assertion that our foreign policy is driven by a passion to encourage the spread of democracy.

So, if Hussein is not the greatest threat to America, and if the United States is considering the use of nuclear weapons, and if we're not dedicated to installing democracy in Iraq, what, then, explains the Bush administration's rush to war? The answer is our government's stated intention to preserve America's supremacy as the paramount world power, which is precariously based on our dependence on oil. By 2020, the United States will import 65 percent of its energy resources. "This dependency," Klare argues, "is the Achilles' heel for American power: Unless Persian Gulf oil can be kept under American control, our ability to remain the dominant world power would be put into question."

Now you know. The question is, what will you do?

©2003 San Francisco Chronicle

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