the most outrageous stretch

Now we were in a Clash of Civilisations, with "radical Islam" replacing fascism and Soviet communism as the west's designated global enemy. Even those conflicts with only the slimmest connection to the battle against al-Qaida were squeezed into the "war on terror". In Russia, Vladimir Putin said he was fighting terror in Chechnya; in Israel, Ariel Sharon insisted he was engaged in the same struggle as his buddy Bush, with Hamas and the ailing Yasser Arafat standing in for al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden. India tried to say the same about the Pakistani militants in Kashmir.

But the most outrageous stretch, because it proved to be the most lethal, was the battle Bush declared to be not only connected to the war on terror but its new frontline: Iraq. According to those who were there, US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld was itching to bomb Iraq on 12 September 2001. There were, he explained, no good targets in Afghanistan – just rubble – but plenty in Iraq. From then on, Bush, Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney embarked on a largely successful effort to persuade the American public that the trail of guilt for 9/11 somehow led to Baghdad.