[The Great Satan]

And, to take the other side of it, it's not like we need extra motivation to get riled up at Saddam right now. What we need is a way of persuading Saddam to give up. That's really the summum bonum at this point.

[Mitchell]

On the other hand, Pres. Bush has an underlying political problem, in that the country does not truly understand the rationale behind this war, and that is why much of the public questions the necessity of the war.

I'm not talking about the overtly antiwar crowd, but the mass of people in the center, and even many conservatives. They're going along with the President for now (this shows up as a high level of support in the polls, but I think the support is relatively shallow). If things get sticky, Pres. Bush is going to have to provide a more cogent, to-the-point rationale to avoid losing public support. I hope it won't be too late at that point; it would be less convincing then than now, since at a later date it might be portrayable as a supposed act of desperation.

(By the way, one can't judge public sentiment via FreeRepublic; FR is definitely not a representative sample of the U.S. population)