Tony Blair might believe he belongs to an international coalition, but George Bush has other ideas. Bush's international war against terrorism has not stopped him from waging a parallel war against cooperation.

Two weeks ago, the US ambassador to the United Nations in Vienna failed, for the first time, to attend a meeting of the comprehensive test ban treaty. This may suggest that America is no longer prepared to abide by the rules against the testing of nuclear warheads. A week ago, the Washington Post revealed that the Pentagon had told the Central Intelligence Agency to investigate Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, in the hope of undermining his credibility. When the CIA failed to discover any evidence of wrongdoing, the deputy defence secretary is reported to have "hit the ceiling".

On Friday, the US government succeeded in dislodging Robert Watson, the chair of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Dr Watson had been pressing member nations to take the threat of global warming seriously, to the annoyance of the oil company ExxonMobil. Last year, it sent a memo to the White House requesting that he be shoved.

Local Seattle activist Melissa Roberts had this to say about it: "We had five days, but we failed to prevent the ousting of Jose Bustani. We are on a runaway train. Bush is now an endangerment to US citizens and residents and must be asked to resign or be removed from office. It's gone over the edge. We are now facing the initiation of nuclear war."

Thanks to 'krokinol' for the topmost link, who titled his email: "usa planning to nuke iraq?" citing this passage:

.... It is also clear that at least three of these recent attempts to undermine international treaties are being pursued with an eye to the impending war with Iraq. As the American plans for destroying Saddam Hussein appear to involve new "bunker busting" nuclear weapons, the nuclear test ban treaty (which the US has never ratified) must be ignored. The US justification for war with Iraq is that Saddam Hussein may possess weapons of mass destruction. So the two foremost obstacles to war were Mr Blix and Mr Bustani, who have proposed non-violent methods of getting rid of these weapons. While the US government doubtless has genuine concerns about weapons of mass destruction, these are not the principal reasons for wishing to conquer Iraq.