“So I’ve told people that, if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon,” Bush told reporters at a White House press conference on Wednesday, exactly one day after Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Tehran and expressed support for Iran’s peaceful nuclear program.

What are we to make of the use of such language?

Either Bush has gone totally mad and now makes statements without consulting his advisors, or the neoconservatives are dreaming of a new world order and no longer feel compelled to hide their goal.

How can Bush talk this way when Iran’s nuclear activities are open to inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency?

The IAEA, the UN’s only nuclear supervisory body, has announced it has found no evidence suggesting that Iran is seeking a nuclear weapons program, and Iran and the agency have taken constructive steps to clear up the remaining ambiguities one by one.

The Iraq issue should serve as a lesson to Bush and those who share his views. They attacked Iraq under the pretext that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction, despite the fact that the IAEA and former chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix repeatedly announced that they had not found any such weapons program in Iraq.

Now what has been the result? Over half a million deaths.

World leaders, scholars, peace activists, and U.S. Congressmen, both Republicans and Democrats, should ask Bush to explain his remarks about World War III.