Donald Rumsfeld's temper tantrums aren't making us any friends overseas. Last Friday Rumsfeld, in front of live cameras, yelled at the assembled NATO delegates from Europe because they wouldn't support a US proposal to station AWACs and Patriot missiles in Turkey, ostensibly to counter a possible attack on Turkey from Iraq. Puzzled, the delegates kept asking him why he thought there was any danger of Iraq attacking Turkey. They have a point; Turkey already has the bulk of its army poised on the border and have sent advance supplies and scouts into Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq. One could argue that the Turkish invasion of Iraq has already begun. But this argument in NATO is yet another sign that the world, particularly Europe, is trying to gang up on the US in hopes of debeaking the imperial eagle. Rumsfeld was reportedly furious to find out that, at the very moment he was chewing out the NATO delegates, France and Germany were putting together a proposed resolution for the UN Security Council that would dramatically increase the number of UN weapons inspectors in Iraq. No, Rummie, you don't control the world. Not yet. Not ever, I hope.--Maria Tomchick

The North Korea crisis ratcheted up another notch this week with Donald Rumsfeld ordering more forces to Asia and putting US bombers on alert status to bomb North Korea's nuclear facility, if George Bush deems it necessary. In his budget proposal released on Tuesday, Bush cut all funding for the 1994 energy agreement with North Korea, even though Colin Powell had held out the promise of restarting fuel oil shipments to North Korea as an incentive for them to close down their nuclear complex at Yongbyon. As usual, the North Koreans didn't know what to think or whom to believe. On Thursday, Colin Powell and his number-two man in the State Department, Richard Armitage, both gave North Korea assurances that the US really does want to open talks with them. Yet, on the same day, Rumsfeld once again beat his chest and said that the US was prepared to fight two wars at once: one in Iraq and one in North Korea. He also called North Korea a "terrorist regime." Disgusted, the North Koreans responded to the Bush administration's schizophrenia with a simple statement: they reserve the right to nuke us first in a preemptive strike--a direct echo of George Bush's own policy position vis-a-vis the rest of the world. At least the Koreans can project a consistent message. What's clear from this whole fiasco is that there's nobody in charge in DC to rein in the psychotics, nor does anyone in the Bush administration care. Powell, a former general with no diplomatic experience, was put in charge of the State Department in hopes that he would muzzle the diplomatic corps. It hasn't exactly worked out that way. But surely it's a sign of extreme danger when a general is the only "dove" inside the White House.--M.T.

George Bush's fixation on Iraq's link to terrorism is doubly ridiculous when you consider the danger of domestic terrorists. The Seattle P-I this week covered a story in Eastern Washington of Rafael Davila and his ex-wife, Deborah Davila, who have been busy selling secret US military documents to white supremacist groups. Rafael Davila used to work as an intelligence officer for the Army National Guard, where he was tasked with destroying classified documents. Instead, it seems he took them home and kept them on his kitchen table to read over breakfast. His wife at the time, Deborah Davila, would then stuff them into file boxes; at one time, there were at least 12 to 15 boxes in their storage locker, some containing documents relating to nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. She then used her connections to sell about 8 of those boxes to a contact in North Carolina, who police think may have passed them on to the Ku Klux Klan, the White Patriot Party, Posse Comitatus, and other militias and neo-Nazi groups. Maybe it's time to do a full-scale invasion of North Carolina, starting with a couple thousand cruise missiles. Quick! Somebody remind me: why are we worried about Iraq?--M.T.

Years ago, the American space program symbolized the aspirations of not just the United States, but all humanity. Now, it's far more parochial: an effort to seize the military high ground and to ensure for American companies the wealth of all the planets, including ours. With that shift, NASA's annual budgets have increasingly failed to invest in the safety of its astronauts or the maintenance of its physical assets--and NASA's bureaucracy has become increasingly resistant to criticism or change. The release, two days later, of President Bush's proposed FY 2004 federal budget was eerily reminiscent of what has happened to NASA. As with NASA, Dubya's proposed $2.2 trillion budget sharply increases emphasis on the military and downplays investment in the basics. Even by the notoriously optimistic economic estimates of the White House, it also carries a staggering $304 billion deficit; one out of every seven federal dollars spent next year will not actually exist. Over half of the non-trust fund spending will be for military purposes, without even including the cost of a possible Iraq invasion or its consequences. Dubya's 2004 budget contains estimates for a federal deficit that are nearly triple of those made by the White House only six months ago. Like NASA's budgets in recent years, it compensates for its unchecked military spending by failing to invest in the country's infrastructure and its people.

The image of a too-wide contrail across the Texas sky is now firmly fixed in the minds of millions, not because a contrail is remarkable, but because of what that image signified. In many ways, the Bush budget proposal is equally frightening--not because of the tedious lines and pages of bureaucratese within, but because we know what they signify: millions of compromised lives. --Geov Parrish

An interview with Frank Blethen, the publisher of the Seattle Times, was the cover feature in last week's Seattle Weekly. In it, Blethen repeatedly blah blahs about the value of "independent journalism" and "watchdog journalism", and boasts about having angered many of the region's largest and most influential business.

At the same time, Blethen submitted a full-page letter "to our readers" in last Wednesday's Times, with lots more blah blah. But he also invited readers to "write to us about the content of the newspaper or your service from us."

So let's let him have it. Send your letter to mycomments@seattletimes.com. Here's some of what I've sent:

Mr. Blethen,

I'd appreciate it if the paper were more forthcoming with the facts surrounding the planned Iraq invasion. Instead of at most capsule coverage (but usually not even that), for example, of the many reports predicting a humanitarian calamity in Iraq should war occur, why not print the reports in their entirety, or at least give prominent coverage of their findings?

Why has the Seattle P-I run two features concerning Depleted Uranium in the past few months while the Times hasn't run any? And why did the Times not afford front page coverage to the story, which broke last week, that the US intends to inflict Hiroshima-like damage upon Baghdad? The plan's creators, after all, are boasting that, "There will be no safe place in Baghdad," and that "you also take the city down. By that I mean you get rid of their power, water." These are major war crimes the US is planning, and openly so, yet it's not important enough to merit a mention?

If we must read Charles Krauthammer's and Michael Kelly's lunacy each week, why not solicit op-eds from the likes of Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Hans von Sponeck, Denis Halliday, Kathy Kelly, Gabriel Kolko? Indeed, why not run Robert Fisk's column? He has, after all, made a career of covering the Arab world, and even speaks the language.

How about more and better coverage of the burgeoning peace movement, whose scope is worldwide, and whose numerous actions before the onset of war are unprecedented in world history? Isn't it worth knowing that 80% or more of the world's population opposes the coming war, with opposition the strongest in the region itself--that is, among those supposedly the most threatened by Saddam's weapons?--Eddie Tews