So again, American missiles and planes are committed to a half-hearted, just-to-make-a-point "war" in Iraq. (Does no one else recall that a longer-haired Bill Clinton once protested a war in Vietnam because it was not legally declared, and further because it was unwinnable, given that Lyndon Johnson's policy of gradual escalation and "measured response" turned out to be good for nothing but filling body bags?)

And so the vast majority of Americans now shuffle into line, dispiritedly rallying once again behind our fighting men and women, praying for their safety.

But Americans express this subdued support in spite of -- not because of -- their faith that their current president would never lie.

President Clinton will almost certainly be impeached by the House of Representatives within days if not hours, for past lies and subversions of justice aimed solely at protecting his own power, privilege and prestige.

But surely matters of life and death, war and peace, are of such moment that no president would subordinate them to any ongoing attempt to sidestep justice ... right?

In the final episode of the award-winning documentary series "The World at War," a middle-aged German woman -- she had been a teen-ager in the spring of 1945 -- recalls hiding in a Berlin basement as Russian shells rained down overhead, listening with her mother to what was likely the final radio broadcast by Nazi public relations chief Joseph Goebbels. When Goebbels promised that the war would yet be won by secret weapons soon to be unveiled by der Fuhrer, the teen-aged girl expressed disbelief. She was then stunned when her mother slapped her, admonishing: "Do you think Herr Goebbels would lie to us at a time like this?

Mr. Clinton's crimes are on nowhere near the scale of those of the Nazis, of course. (Though the relatives of the women and children his henchmen killed at Waco might ask what difference the "scale" makes -- as now the same question may occur to those dying in Iraq to prevent that sovereign nation from stockpiling the same kinds of weapons the United States has possessed for decades.)

But isn't there a ghastly fastidiousness to the way this simpering administration insists it will not bomb during the Ramadan holiday so as not to offend "Muslim sensibilities"? When George Patton's First Army was racing to the relief of Bastogne, did the troops take a day off from killing Germans on Dec. 25? If foreigners bombed your home and killed you family, would you be less offended to have them do so on Dec. 22 than on Christmas Day, or Yom Kippur?

Do Mr. Clinton and his political advisors really understand what war (start ital)is(end ital)?

Meantime, the evidence mounts (it never seems to take long, anymore) that Mr. Clinton did indeed lie again on Dec. 16, when he told the American people that he decided on the timing of these latest bombings not to divert attention from his own impending impeachment, but rather upon the specific catalyst of receiving -- on Wednesday -- a final report from U.N. arms inspectors.

The Washington Times reported in a front page story Thursday that, according to "authoritative sources," the White House notified the Joint Chiefs of Staff that air strikes would be ordered this week on (start ital)Sunday(end ital), "48 hours before he saw a United Nations report declaring Iraq in noncompliance with weapons inspectors."

Providing third-party corroboration, Israeli spokesman Aviv Bushinsky said Wednesday that President Clinton discussed preparations for an attack with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu just minutes before Mr. Clinton flew home from Israel on (start ital)Tuesday(end ital).

What does it matter, which day the president made the decision? It doesn't , of course; it only matters if the president deliberately lied about it, which then throws into question anything else he has said about the real motives for these actions.

The Times further quotes a "senior congressional source" reporting that "White House eagerness to launch air strikes grew with intensity as a parade of centrist Republicans announced they would vote to impeach the president."

The credibility of the president (start ital)does(end ital) matter. The ability of the public to have confidence that the man in the Oval Office will put the faithful execution of his constitutional oath and duties ahead of his personal ambition -- even his own political survival -- does matter.

Or are we willing to accept a world in which wars orchestrated by television producers with the goal of improving "ratings points" turn out not to be fiction, at all?

(The second thing White House spokesmen did Dec. 16 -- after announcing the latest raids on Iraq -- was to deny this was "a Wag the Dog scenario," referring to the reason cult comedy in which a hypothetical president arranges a fake Balkan war to keep a sex scandal off the front pages.)

For all his failings, can anyone imagine Franklin Roosevelt troubling himself to deny that the D-Day landings of 1944 were staged as a mere political stunt, to "make him look more presidential"?

Mind you, I wish more Americans would start ridiculing the absurd assumption that we need the federal government to hold our hands and change our diapers, cradle to grave. The best remedy for the pretensions of many of these arrogant bureaucrats to run our lives is indeed to laugh them out of town.

I just never expected to see the United States of America turned so quickly into an impotent laughing stock, and from the top down.

Vin Suprynowicz is the assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Readers may contact him via e-mail at vin@lvrj.com.

Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com

The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it. -- John Hay, 1872

The most difficult struggle of all is the one within ourselves. Let us not get accustomed and adjusted to these conditions. The one who adjusts ceases to discriminate between good and evil. He becomes a slave in body and soul. Whatever may happen to you, remember always: Don't adjust! Revolt against the reality! -- Mordechai Anielewicz, Warsaw, 1943

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