t has been plain for weeks that the US military timetable is dictating events. That is the principal reason why Britain has run out of time for its "second resolution". Yesterday the unjustly vilified French offered yet another compromise. The inspections process is still ongoing; Hans Blix is due to set out Iraq's next disarmament tasks in a report this week. Iraq itself is still voluntarily destroying missiles that it might well prefer to keep given the threat it faces. It has invited Mr Blix to pay another visit. If Mr Blair and Mr Bush arbitrarily wreck this process now, as seems certain, they will be branded warmongers by most of the world. And they will make their own peoples targets for terrorist retribution.

Whatever the attorney general may say in the Lords today, the pretence that the US and Britain are acting legally in circumventing the UN is preposterous. Resolution 1441, upon which their case mainly rests, invoked, embraced and superseded all previous Iraq-related resolutions. It specifically did not authorise the use of military force. If it had, it simply would not have been passed. Mr Blair and Mr Bush also risk breaching the UN charter, as Kofi Annan notes. They have no legal mandate to attack, let alone a mandate for regime change and an indefinite occupation. Rarely has war been launched from such shaky ground. Rarely have a war's proponents been so blind, so wrong and in such a rush.

Would-be emperors must now assume they are naked. Sophisticated analysts exist on all continents with the information and capability to discern when someone attempts to pull the wool over the world's eyes. Cross-cultural communication has dramatically increased the sharing of insights that pierce the veil of secret transnational agendas. They expose oil profiteering by covert supporters of war. They identify lucrative business connections (arms dealers and defense contractors) that will benefit from war regardless of who wins. They describe hidden conflicts, like the US-European competition over the role of the dollar versus the euro in energy markets. They point out the power of personal vendettas and egos in political decision making. The US is in a fishbowl.

The PNAC document supports a 'blueprint for maintaining global US pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests'.

This 'American grand strategy' must be advanced for 'as far into the future as possible', the report says. It also calls for the US to 'fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars' as a 'core mission'.

The report describes American armed forces abroad as 'the cavalry on the new American frontier'. The PNAC blueprint supports an earlier document written by Wolfowitz and Libby that said the US must 'discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role'.