This is what happens when you finally try and organize your bookmarks - you find all sorts of gems that you haven't visited in ages, such as the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Even if you don't think you know these guys, you do. Remember the Doomsday Clock, whose minute hand is moved closer or farther from midnight depending on certain international events in order to illustrate how close humanity is to wiping itself off the face of the earth? Well, that was their baby (and btw, we're seven minutes to midnight, back where the clock started in 1947. There's nothing like progress, eh?). The Atomic Scientists have a few choice things to say about the Bush Administration's so-called "evidence" of Iraq's nuclear weapons capability. Dick Cheney and company have been blitzing the media with allegations that Saddam could have a working bomb imminently, although they've been coy with revealing the intelligence that would substantiate such a chilling scenario. Well, the reason why we haven't seen any of it on CNN yet is that it doesn't really exist, and that the administration - surprise, surprise - is distorting what few scraps they do have of attempted Iraqi violations concerning weapons of mass destruction into their new-and-improved casus belli, now that the conjectured Saddam-Al Qaeda link is sounding more and more like, well, conjecture.

And here's another stunner: apparently George Senior pulled exactly the same stunt in 1991, when dire (and completely fantastic) predictions of Saddam and nuclear-tipped Scud missiles helped the United States get its first Gulf War on. Like father, like son, I guess. Dad didn't try to ram a hasty Congressional vote authorizing military action down the opposition's throat right before Election Day, though, whereas Dubya's already busy turning his campaign against Iraq into the ultimate electoral litmus test...

But I forgot - we're talking about a sequel here. This time, it's personal.