Six million marched for peace last week, but the Bush Regime and the Blair Regency were unmoved by this outburst from the ignorant rabble. Instead, the righteous leaders of the "Coalition of the Willing" (or COW) declared that no power on earth will halt their holy quest to rid the world of Saddam Hussein and his chemical weapons.

Strange, then, to see one of COW's biggest bovines -- Pentagon warlord Donald "Squinty" Rumsfeld -- informing the dazed and docile rubber stamps of Congress of his intention to assault Iraq with, er, chemical weapons.

Rumsfeld told Congress he has asked COW head George W. Bush to sign a special waiver allowing American forces to use biochemical weapons against Iraqi troops and civilians in the upcoming stampede into Iraq, UPI reported. What's more, the COW chemicals would be launched unilaterally, as part of the standard Rules of Engagement -- and not merely in retaliation for an attack with similar weapons by Hussein.

In his extraordinary testimony, Rumsfeld openly complained about the onerous restrictions imposed on American forces by the stupid old Chemical Weapons Convention that the U.S. signed -- indeed, initiated -- many years ago. Rumsfeld told the Congressfolk of his deep "regret" that the United States had "tangled ourselves up so badly" with all that sissy-Mary malarkey in the first place. But now, thank God, a real brush-clearin', pretzel-chompin' he-man is sitting on top of the COW, so Squinty is sure to get that waiver.

What Squinty wants to do is unleash a barrage of so-called "nonlethal" biochemical weapons against any godless Ayrab stupid enough to resist the incoming herd. This array of incapacitators -- or to use the Pentagon's quaint term, "calmatives" -- will include fighting pharmaceuticals developed by the world's leading drug companies. True, the weaponization of medicine is something of a departure from the Hippocratic Oath -- but what's health and healing when your COW is calling you to war? Anyway, isn't the Hippocratic Oath -- like the CWC, the ABM Treaty, the UN Charter, the Bill of Rights, indeed, the very notion of law itself -- outmoded in the new Bush imperium?

Rumsfeld hopes to emulate the glorious success of Russian security forces, who used "nonlethal calmatives" to liberate the Nord-Ost hostages from their captors -- and from the bonds of earthly existence as well. But there's one slight hitch: The Russians' employment of "calmatives" -- however blundering and murderous -- was legal under international law, which permits the use of "crowd-control devices" in domestic law enforcement situations. But the use of any chemical weapon against people in wartime -- no matter how supposedly nonlethal it might be -- is expressly forbidden by a number of international treaties, all signed by the United States.

Not only that: The very production of such combat weapons is prohibited -- which is supposedly why COW is on its high horse about Iraq. Squinty knows this, of course; that's why he and COW head Bush have quietly shifted funding authority for "calmative" research from Pentagon coffers to John Ashcroft's Justice Department -- it gives "domestic" cover to the military program. Meanwhile, Squinty proudly notes that production of "delivery systems" for the weaponized drugs is rolling right along: The COW invaders will be able to use both an unmanned "loitering vehicle" -- which hovers in the air and sprays brain-deadening and gut-wrenching juice over all and sundry -- and a good old-fashioned mortar shell loaded with chemical cocktails.

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Rumsfeld painted the deployment of field chemical weapons as a "humanitarian gesture," but here, too, there's a slight hitch. "There is no way known to medical science that can put large numbers of people to sleep without killing a sizable percentage of them," Harvard biology professor and biochemical weapons expert Matt Meselson told The Nation. This is particularly disturbing in the light of Pentagon documents obtained by The Sunshine Project, a Texas-based group devoted to biochemical warfare issues, detailing the actual plans for the weapons.