I don't know where LCH ( Iraq was a war o­n terrorism ) gets his stuff from, that the Iraqi war was about terrorism - or what he calls the ideological reality of a war against terrorism. He then proceeds to make a series of mind-numbing claims that lack analytical credibility. There's pretension attached to his use of his heuristic device. Consider the following.

First of all, I'd like to meet LCH's "most objective academics". In the 13 years that I've been teaching, researching and writing in universities, I am yet to meet o­ne of these people. Just as I've never met an 'objective journalist', even from the famed New York Times , the Wall Street Journal or the Financial Times . And I know a few of them.

Thing is, as much as we can feign being 'objective' we're never really ever 'value neutral'. We're all reduced by subjectivity and inter-subjectivity and to various biases, including ideology.

And to reduce ideology to reality, or even to equate the two, as LCH has done, is to extemporise an intellectual canard, to debauch political theory, and that of epistemology, for LCH's equation or reduction is produced through a fallacy of composition and a contradiction in terms.

Ideology encompasses consciousness and political conviction to o­ne school of thought; 'reality' is the state of things as they are or appear to be, rather than as o­ne might wish them to be. A huge difference.

LCH says North Korea's nuclear threats are "mostly defensive", and that it will strike the United States if threatened. o­n the first point: tell that to South Koreans and the Japanese, because they'll tell you they're petrified, especially when North Korea fires missiles into the Sea of Japan with disregard and in full view of the South Koreans and the Japanese public.

Imagine what Malaysians would think if Singapore fires a missile into the Malacca Straits, or flew o­ne of its AWACS planes close to or high over Malaysian territory. Would Malaysian reaction not be the same as South Korea's or Japan's?

Which is why South Korea and Japan are now beefing up their defence expenditures and tightening their military alliance with the US.

In fact, hawks in Tokyo want the Washington to lift Japan's constitutional constraints so that its military power can be changed from a self-defence to offensive capability. What will China and the rest of Asia, which experienced brutal Japanese military excursions during World War II, have to say about that move?

On LCH's second point in the same sentence: if LCH is right that North Korea will o­nly strike the US if threatened, then we know from all the literature o­n international relations that the US did the same against the old Soviet Union during the Cold War.

It's called deterrence, and within it the promise of mutually assured destruction (MAD). Nothing new of course, except a safe bet - from experts in Australia and the US - that North Korean ballistic missile capability probably cannot (yet) reach the US or even Australia. But that's not stopping Washington and Canberra from saying otherwise. Go figure.

Furthermore, LCH uses "truth is" phrases a lot but each o­ne misses fundamental historical points but which the writer nevertheless seems happy to produce by building internal contradictions in the arguments.

First example: LCH says North Korea has backed away from pursuing a nuclear programme for other benefits (without specifying these so-called benefits).

LCH is reading far too much in Pyongyang's agreement to hold talks with the US in what we describe in international relations as a "bold policy switchover". To talk of "breakthrough" is to jump the gun. Both sides have said they reserve the right o­n the format of talks and their conduct. And to suggest the North Korean regime is o­nly interested in holding o­n to power is to suggest that perhaps the George W Bush regime is not.

LCH makes things up as he goes o­n. Second example: he suggests anti-western and anti-American governments like Libya, Syria and Saudi Arabia that perpetrate violence are nonetheless "closeted ( sic ) sympathisers" (of, presumably, the US). In o­ne sense this is a kind of weird truism. In another sense, it is blatantly misleading.

LCH forgets that Saudi Arabia was cajoled by Washington into advancing US national interests in the Middle East this time as it was in 1991. My sense, though, is that there would be no American pressure to turn Saudi Arabia into a democratic state any time soon. Call it pay-off.

As for Syria and Libya, it seems foolish, given what we know, to lump the two staunchly anti-American Arabic states with the Saudis. Libya and Syria, like Iraq, Iran and Sudan, have long been classified as "rogue states" by Washington.

Making sweeping generalisations and fallacious and uncritical claims are unhelpful. In any case, in no way has LCH demonstrated his much-vaunted "objectivity". In fact he riddles his letter with biases, even ideological o­nes.

Which leaves me wondering how he knows, as a matter of his truth and his reality, that American policy in the Middle East (and elsewhere) isn't about oil and isn't targeted at Muslim states.

Which also has me wondering how, in LCH's truth and reality, he knows that this war was in fact a war against terrorism. Because if it were why hasn't the US launched an invasion of Pakistan, or Indonesia, or taken out Mindanao in the Philippines, or even parts of Malaysia and southern Thailand, even Burma?

Given what we know, from the excuses offered by Washington, London and Canberra - seven o­n my last count, and these shifted as rapidly as Iraq's desert sands - how the heck has LCH deduced that this was "in reality an ideological war against terrorism"?

Simple: he plucked o­ne of the seven feathers that blew in the wind - just like Bush, Blair and Howard had done. Ingenious.