Why this is a religious war after all.
Conservatives sharpen their knives and take a few swipes at the secretary of state.
Certainly, William Safire doesn't pull any punches in his New York Times column Monday. That's even worse than being caught napping. Powell's job is to know which nations will stab us in the back in return for some Chinese trade or Arab oil preference or Security Council vote. But Safire wasn't the only one. In early March, he said the administration would negotiate with North Korea on the matter of its nuclear-arms program.