Gene Lyons on Caligula's arrogance.

Meanwhile, fools busy pouring Bordeaux wine into gutters and re-naming French fries--will "Freedom ticklers" be next?--had best start boycotting Canadian bacon and picketing Taco Bells, because Bush couldn't persuade even our closest neighbors. Polls show that majorities in Ireland, for godsake, consider Junior a greater threat to world peace than Saddam Hussein.

They are not anti-American. They are anti-Bush. Sublime in his arrogance, Monday night Bush repeated the Big Lie that's seemingly persuaded 45 percent of Americans that Saddam Hussein was "personally involved" in the 9/11 terror attacks. Even so, scant majorities support "preventive war" against a nation that has never attacked the United States--a "Pearl Harbor" strategy for which, as Michael Lind of the New America Foundation provocatively points out, "Japanese war criminals were hanged by the U.S. after World War II."