The boy king and his war.

• Position: Comment - George W. Bush

By the time you read these words, George W. Bush may already have launched his war against Iraq. Since August, he has acted like a boy king, stomping his feet and demanding, "I want my war. Give me my war." He told all of his vassals to make sure it happened, and at press time, it sure looked likely.

The whole issue of getting inspectors into Iraq, even the goal of disarmament, was a ruse. What Bush has wanted all along is to overthrow Saddam Hussein. He was honest about that originally, though he used the hideous neologism "regime change." But when that wouldn't fly diplomatically, he reverted to disarmament. Then, when it became obvious that Saddam was cooperating, at least to some extent, with the inspectors, Bush pulled the "regime change" card out of his sleeve once again.

At almost every opportunity, Bush claimed that Saddam was not only a threat but a "growing" or "mounting" or "gathering" threat.

But how could Iraq be such a threat when U.N. inspectors were going anywhere they wanted, anytime they wanted, to search for these weapons?

How could Iraq be such a threat when Saddam was destroying many of his Al Samoud missiles? Hans Blix, chief U.N. weapons inspector, said this action constitutes "a substantial measure of disarmament.... We're not watching the breaking of toothpicks here. Lethal weapons are being destroyed."

How could it be such a threat when Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said that there is "no evidence of the revival of a nuclear weapons program"?

How could it be such a threat when U.S., French, German, and Russian spy planes were free to survey every inch of Iraqi territory and then pass their intelligence on to the inspectors?

Before Secretary of State Colin Powell received other instructions from his boss, he used to say that Saddam was in a box. Because of inspections, the walls of the box were closing in on Saddam.

But that didn't satisfy Bush.

The boy king wanted Saddam's head.

This is not how democracy is supposed to work. Congress itself committed a horrendous blunder when, last October, it abdicated its responsibility under the Constitution. By handing Bush a bill that essentially said he could go to war against Iraq any damn time he pleased, Congress ceded its power to declare war and thus did away with a fundamental check and balance.

James Madison wrote in 1793: "In no part of the Constitution is more wisdom to be found than in the clause which confides the question of...