Much of the rhetoric from Bush Administration officials in the lead-up to the invasion was reflective of the idea that theworld is full of threats that are unseen and unknown, perhaps even unknowable.
No particular shame is felt, for example, over the famous goal Mr Maradona scored with his hand, unseen by the referee, to put England out of the 1986 World Cup which Argentina went on to win.
The seen is the comfortable lives of Washington bureaucrats, but theunseen concerns what they might be doing in a more dynamic world marked by success and failure.