George Will, a prominent conservative columnist, declared Thursday that the "axis of evil" that President Bush coined in 2002 -- Iran, Iraq and North Korea -- are more dangerous than they were when President Bush first uttered the phrase.
"Almost three years after the invasion, it is still not certain whether, or in what sense, Iraq is a nation," Will writes. "And after two elections and a referendum on the constitution, Iraq barely has a government. A defining attribute of a government is that it has a monopoly on the legitimate exercise of violence. That attribute is incompatible with the existence of private militias of the sort that maraud in Iraq." |