A Dog of War

In The Age Tony Parkinson in his column entitled Time will come again to let slip dogs of war writes that

The growing number of nations pursuing a nuclear weapons program means a pre-emptive military strike such as that in Iraq is inevitable.

In a sneaky bit of hack journalism Parkinson spends half his column discussing remarks by Mohhamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Evidently ElBaradei argues that in the future

"I believe the Security Council should under certain circumstances authorise pre-emptive measures - collective pre-emptive measures - to address extreme threats to international peace and security, such as to prevent genocide or to counter an imminent threat to use weapons of mass destruction in an act of aggression."

Parkinson ( not ElBaradei) then goes on to link Syria, Libya and Iran to this scenario and concludes

For those tempted to think this whole threat assessment is a beat-up, the hallucinatory fantasy of Washington neo-cons, ElBaradei's warnings constitute an important wake-up call - both on the nature of the risks, and the necessary range of responses that might have to be considered.

The problem is Tony that this whole threat assessment is a beat up by Washington neo-cons as can be seen in this post by Joshua Landis