WASHINGTON, 15 June 2003 — This is an imaginary but quite plausible conversation between an American mother and her child.

Child: “Mommy, why did we go to war in Iraq?”

Mother: “Well baby, the President said Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and had ties to terrorists, like those bad men in the Al-Qaeda network. He said those bad men were helping their terrible leader, Osama Bin Laden. The president also said we should depose or kill Saddam Hussein, the bad man who was leading Iraq. We think he’s gone, but we’re not sure.”

Child: “Mommy, what is a weapon of mass destruction, and did we ever find any in Iraq?”

Mother: “Well, a weapon of mass destruction is a weapon that can kill a lot of people at the same time, made of chemicals or biological substances — germs that are enhanced to be spread around and make people catch the same fatal disease all at once, or chemicals that make you choke. “And we’re looking hard, but we still haven’t found any.”

Child: “Mommy, do only bad countries have weapons of mass destruction?”

Mother: “Well dear, actually we have some weapons of mass destruction and we’re the best country in the world.”

Child: “But mommy, if we have them, how can we tell other countries not to have them?”

Mother: “I guess, honey, because we have different kinds of weapons of mass destruction. We have what are called nuclear bombs — not those bad chemical and biological weapons. Our nuclear weapons are good weapons, not bad weapons. They’re so good in fact, Republicans in Congress want to produce what they call ‘mini-nukes’ that can burrow underground and cause miniature nuclear explosions underground so bad men like Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden can’t hide from us in underground bunkers.”

Child: “Well, if we didn’t find the bad men, and they never had weapons of mass destruction, did killing all those people make it safer for kids like me here in America?”

Mother: “Well dear, that was the goal. Just after the war, our political leaders did try to make it look like maybe we chipped away at the capacity of bad, mean people to harm small children like you. Our wonderful president even came out at the beginning of this month and said, as he stood aboard a powerful aircraft carrier in a beautiful, patriotic and dramatic pose, that ‘the tide had turned’ in the war on terrorism. But now it’s looking like he might have been wrong.”

Child: “What makes you say he was wrong, mommy?”

Mother: “Well, baby, our country had to send out a message to all our citizens and to the whole world this week, raising the nation’s terrorism threat alert to a high level — almost the highest level. That’s because the brave men and women who monitor the activities of terrorists and bad people around the world believe there may soon be another attack here or close by. There were two recent suicide bomb attacks in far-away countries, Saudi Arabia and Morocco. Dozens of innocent people including many Americans died in those attacks. And our wonderful president thinks those attacks were launched by Osama Bin Laden’s terrorist network. That was the network we were supposed to have demolished when we waged war on Iraq and the war before that in Afghanistan.”

Child: “So mommy, how can I stay safe? Will you save me if we get bombed?”

Mother: “Oh sweetheart, you know I will throw myself over your body and save you from any horrible thing, no matter how big or how bad. But I must say, I wish the president were doing a better job of protecting us grown ups, now that I think about it. I mean, we’re spending billions of dollars to keep our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan and to repair those countries.

“And our local schools and people are suffering. Our mayor is cutting teacher pay so he can spend more on police overtime because of the high level of security alert. Geez, baby, now that I think about it, maybe this war wasn’t such a good idea after all.”

(Bonnie Erbe, host of the PBS program “To the Contrary,” writes for Scripps Howard News Service. E-mail bonnieerbe @ CompuServe.com.)