THE footage was replayed again this weekend, a recurring nightmare from a dozen camera angles. However often we witness it, the enormity of September 11 will never fully sink in.

The world changed that day, and it is changing still. President George Bush's war against terrorism is about to enter a critical new phase.

The war's first battle has been all but won. We can say that because the US attacks on Afghanistan, backed by a global coalition, had practical, pursuable goals: to wreck the al-Qaeda terrorist network, to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, to rid the world of the evil Taliban regime.

The Taliban are history and the terrorist network has been badly disrupted. Bin Laden's fate, meanwhile, is unknown.

Now President Bush is looking to extend the boundaries of his war. This is deeply unsettling. No one denies that the terrorist threat is real and frightening. But the Presidential cure could be as dangerous as the disease.

President Bush was right to strike back at the Afghan-based terrorists who plotted September 11. He was ably supported by Britain.

But his eagerness to take the fight to Iraq reveals a hawkish unilateralism which must be reined in by other world leaders, led by Tony Blair.

Because the war against terrorism has no clearly defined enemy, Washington can pick and choose its targets to fit in with America's political outlook.

Saddam Hussein is, and always has been, a danger to the free world. But to attack him now, at a time when the Middle East is already on the brink of full-scale war, would be an act of terrible folly.

Many in the Arab world would take this as confirmation that the global war on terrorism is really a Western war against them. A US air attack on Iraq could quickly escalate leading to what one commentator described as this century's Vietnam.

Today Mr Blair was meeting Vice-President Dick Cheney. The Prime Minister must use his position as a respected statesman to urge the US to restrain its military ambitions.

Updated: 10:54 Monday, March 11, 2002