In this narrowing discussion of what is possible, government assurances about a "domestic source" for the anthrax attacks (and after a month of one-day whoppers, should we be trusting any government assurances about anthrax?) can reasonably be considered an effort to damp down the popular notion that the Republic of Iraq is involved in the Twin Towers attack, the anthrax attack, or both.

This damping down is probably a good thing. If you survey the leading theorists of the Iraq connection you find an assorted collection of interested parties - blowhard former weapons inspector Richard Butler, tough-guy deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, bitter ex-CIA director James Woolsey, and marginal Iraqi National Congress chief Ahmed Chalabi are among the leading proponents.

Nevertheless, inconvenient evidence of world-class highjinx by Saddam Hussein keeps cropping up - and not all of it can be dismissed as leaks from government hawks to their media lapdogs. German authorities are investigating the possibility that hijacker Mohammed Atta got anthrax samples from Iraq; Czech interior minister Stanislav Gross has confirmed that at least one of the fabled meetings between Atta and Iraqi intelligence officer Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir Al-Ani really did take place. Various sources suspect Iraq or the Czech Republic of being the source of the USPS anthrax; according to others, Iraq, the United States and the Soviet Union are the leading possibilities. You'll recall that there is already a circumstantial Atta-Anthrax connection through Gloria Irish, the real estate agent who rented Atta and fellow adventurer Marwan al-Shehhi their apartment. (Irish's husband Mike is an editor at the American Media building where the first recorded anthrax attack took place.) None of this is very conclusive evidence, but given the paucity of evidence of any kind, given the fact that not one of the nearly 1,000 arrests made by the FBI has led to any charge related to the WTC attack, it's hard to understand why there's such a hurry to quash the belief that our enemies' front may be broader than we thought.

But one of the oddest connections between the pride of the Saudi upper class and the artist formerly known as the Bully of Baghdad may be in their sharing of an odd figure of speech. Here's a passage from bin Laden's famous interview with ABC's John Miller:

Compare this with a rambling open letter from Saddam, published in Al Hayat on September 17:

To be fair, Saddam's letter contains much - including repeated calls (delivered in a tone of folksy advice) for America to return to isolationism - that I agree with. But this reference to the United States being not merely stopped or defeated but broken up - presumably into a loose and mutually distrustful confederation of Ohiostans and People's Republics of Dakota - is the key.

Among other things, it represents a unique new goal for America's adversaries. Krushchev dreamed of seeing the American people happily raise the Soviet flag. Hitler wanted to bomb the Big Apple, and even tried to build a long-range bomber nicknamed the "New York."

But this dream of separating the country into a cluster of Qatar-sized "states" - a situation America hasn't seen since the presidency of John Hanson - is original, and pretty silly. The many calls for patriotic unity Americans are hearing these days may be hollow, but it's unlikely Arizonans and Delawarites are likely to come to blows over competing interests - particularly at a moment when we have such compelling foreign enemies to keep us unified (in fear if nothing else).

Which hints at a more subtle truth: that for all their cunning and astuteness, both Osama and Saddam remain fairly parochial figures. Bin Laden had his brief period as an Oxford man about town, but his heart clearly wasn't in it. And it's not clear that Saddam has ever ventured outside Iraq at all. Though we frequently (and rightly) beat ourselves up for our lack of understanding of the East, it's worth noting that these two firebrands are in their own ways even more ignorant of the West.

That ignorance, however, doesn't make their end goal any less menacing or unseemly. We probably should not view the planned state-by-state deconstruction of America as a grandiose pipe dream but as merely part of a plan that ends with our liquidation. These exciting and intriguing foes do not seek merely to change our government, nor to drive us out of the Near East, nor even to pound us into submission. They want to destroy us completely. Objectionable as George W. Bush's wild-west sloganeering may be, it doesn't take a genius to realize that this planet ain't big enough for the both of us.