| The times have changed and reality isn't what it used to be. As the adviser explained, "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality." This mad-hatter thinking was on display again last week. President Bush, who used specious claims about a nuclear threat to launch his disastrous war in Iraq, agreed to a deal -- in blatant violation of international accords and several decades of bipartisan U.S. policy -- that would enable India to double or triple its annual production of nuclear weapons. The president turned his back on the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (dismissed, like reality-based thinking, as passe') and moved the world a step closer to an accelerated nuclear arms race in Asia and elsewhere. In the president's empire-based, otherworldly way of thinking, this was a good thing. |




