As reports came in a few weeks back about bombings in Saudi Arabia and Morocco, we had to finally conclude that the anti-war folks were right about many things. Besides diverting attention from the war on terrorism, the war against Iraq has spurred more violent attacks on US targets. In fact, anti-war voices had predicted just such a development well before the US invasion. And now, even supporters of the administration, like Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, are reminding us that the "planning for peace was much less developed than the planning for war" and that Iraq is a potential "incubator for terrorist cells and activity."

During the months of relative quiet preceding the invasion, the administration often proclaimed that the war on terrorism was being won. Now that terrorist groups have struck again, those statements ring hollow and as Mark Twain would have put it, the reports of the death of Al Qaeda have been greatly exaggerated.

Indeed, it looks like the intelligence on the crippled terrorist network was as faulty as the intelligence reports that Iraq had large stockpiles of biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons ready to be used by its troops. War opponents urged that UN inspectors be given a chance to see if there were enough weapons in Iraq to constitute a threat that would justify the use of force, or even if there were any such weapons at all. Even though the inspectors were not given more time to assess the threat, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld now says that the US military also needs more time to find the weapons that supposedly were there all along. Opponents of the war repeatedly had asked for credible evidence that Iraq posed a direct challenge to US security. The upcoming "Weaponsgate" investigations may lead to a questioning of the Administration that was unthinkable several weeks ago.

Absent that threat, the invasion of Iraq has already had negative consequences. Diplomatically, the invasion fractured the UN and the Atlantic alliance, and it severely compromised US credibility. As a result, the full international cooperation that we need to combat terrorism will be harder to come by. In the future, it will be more difficult to get the assistance and support of other countries as we try to deal with real threats to US security. Again, such concerns were raised by many in the anti-war movement well before the first shot was fired.

Setting aside the diplomatic fallout, we note that, thankfully, the Iraqi people are free from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein. But many in Iraq are asking: What kind of freedom is it when health problems (such as the outbreaks of cholera), disrupted energy and food supplies, and the loss of public order (as evidenced by significant looting and rioting, ethnic conflict, guerilla attacks, and revenge killings) are daily realities? A recent report from Amnesty International states that the war has led to increased human right violations world-wide, while sill noting the value of Hussein no longer being in power. Though some of these effects will be short-lived, others clearly will not. Before the war began, we can remember discussions of some of these possible consequences from people in the peace movement.

Further, recent newspaper accounts have placed the number of civilian deaths in the range of 5,000-10,000?much higher than previously estimated. The invasion of Iraq certainly was not the sort of "clean war" that supporters proclaimed it would be. And we have reason to expect thousands of additional civilian casualties as cluster bombs explode and as cancer and birth defects appear, caused by the tons of depleted uranium used by the US during the war. (By the way, depleted uranium has been labeled as a WMD by the UN. Although the US argues that it does not cause ill effects, there are reports that US soldiers were told to avoid areas where depleted uranium was heavily used.)

Finally, opponents of the war often said that a "pre-emptive" or "preventive" attack by the US could be used by other countries to justify the same practice. Though there are more realistic possibilities, North Korea, with a genuine fear of being invaded, could decide to strike first against the US. After all, back in February, North Korean leaders noted that "preemptive attacks are not the exclusive right of the US." The high probability, of course, is that such talk was nothing more than saber-ratting. Otherwise, we'll all have cause to curse our decision to go to war.

The authors are professors at Manchester College, Indiana

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