How far can perceived self-interest go in blinding one to impending peril? A very long way apparently:

On the pedestrian-only streets of Munich's historic downtown yesterday, couples walked arm in arm past elegant boutiques and narrow stores offering 100 different kinds of homemade chocolate truffle. Cathedral bells pealed through the snow. Skaters in an open-air rink twirled to the sounds of Tina Turner and the cheering smells of roasting chestnuts beneath the enduring walls of great medieval structures.

And here was Herr Rumsfeld to tell them that "the security environment we are entering is the most dangerous the world has known." This is a historic moment of testing for the world's free nations, he warned. "The lives of our children and grandchildren could well hang in the balance."

Who would want to believe such a thing? Life here does not seem dangerous. Life here is civilized. Iraq is far away. Between Rumsfeld, who addressed a security conference here yesterday, and the thousands of demonstrators against war in Iraq who were kept at a distance by 3,500 police officers, there may be many differences, but probably none more significant than the gap in perception of risk.

....The immediate source of tension was a NATO proposal to help Turkey prepare for a possible attack from Iraq by sending it Patriot missiles, AWACS planes and units trained to deal with chemical or biological attack. France and Germany have informally blocked such plans for days and were said to be planning to formally block them tomorrow. "Inexcusable," said Rumsfeld. "A terrible injury" to NATO, agreed Republican Sen. John McCain, also a speaker here yesterday. Clinton administration officials in the audience were equally scandalized.

The Turkey fight is a proxy for the larger disagreement over Iraq, which in turn fits into the larger clash of whether the world is in fact as dangerous as Rumsfeld argued. And on that subject, the defense secretary yesterday made as powerful a case as had his Cabinet colleague Colin Powell in the United Nations last week — overpowering the opposition not with evidence this time but with logic. He was polite (no lumping of Germany with Cuba and Libya) but relentless.

"Everyone's entitled to their own opinion, but they're not entitled to their own facts," Rumsfeld said. And given the facts Powell had laid out, Rumsfeld argued that inaction is unacceptably perilous. A dozen years of U.N. resolutions, inspections and sanctions have not worked, he said; deterrence cannot work against "a terrorist state that can conceal its responsibility for an attack," as the sponsor of the 1996 attack against U.S. forces in the Khobar Towers remains concealed.

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