Is G W Bush's foreign policy ethical or is it just murderous blather?

Today it is as though George W. Bush has learned nothing of the lessons of Vietnam.

Since 9/11, the Bush administration has been less than candid with the facts.

9/11 was a terrible crime but first and foremost an intelligence and law-enforcement failure, not a national security issue. Not enough to round up an international posse, charging across borders at will. There are other ways to get the bad guys.

Bush's reason for doing so was obvious.

It was always going to be easier to deal with terrorism as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces of the United States than as Chief Executive of the American government.

As chief executive Bush was on shaky ground; as commander-in-chief he could make things happen in a hurry. Forest Gump had been promoted overnight.

Bush also took advantage of America's hurt and insecurity and played it for all it was worth.

He also knew full well that he could not diminish the possibility of terrorist attacks on American soil by getting rid of Saddam Hussein, who was clearly regarded as an inauthentic Islamic leader by al-Qa'ida. His Ba'ath party was not religious and Saddam was not a radical like Osama bin Laden, though no one doubted that he was a killer-tyrant.

How Bush succeeded in deflecting American anger from bin Laden to Saddam was one of the great public relations con jobs in the long history of government con jobs.

And it gets worse.

The Bush campaign to kill the Iraqi leader, frankly admitted at the highest levels in Washington, has committed America for the first time to public, personalised assassination.

The predictable argument is Saddam's survival encourages resistance. The sad truth is that the US has never openly before marked a foreign leader for killing.