IHT: Maureen Dowd: Bush's call to war is incoherent The case for war has been incoherent due to the overlapping reasons that conservatives give for wanting to get Saddam. The president wants to avenge his father and please his base. Donald Rumsfeld wants to exorcise the post-Vietnam focus on American imperfections and limitations. Dick Cheney wants to establish America's primacy as the sole superpower. Richard Perle wants to liberate Iraq and remove a mortal threat to Israel. After Desert Storm, Paul Wolfowitz posited that containment is a relic, and that America must aggressively preempt nuclear threats.