Brilliant Bush

WITH the cool precision of a surgeon, George Bush cut deep into the poison of Saddam Hussein’s deadly regime.

In one of the most powerful speeches the United Nations has witnessed, Bush laid bare the “grave and gathering danger” of the Iraqi dictator.

The President destroyed those critics who brand him a cowboy who shoots first and thinks later.

Bush spoke in careful, clinical detail of Saddam’s decade of contempt for UN resolutions.

He brilliantly shifted the burden for the decision to take action against Iraq on to the UN.

The tactic, urged on him by Tony Blair, makes it very difficult for the world to do nothing.

His massive STOCKPILES of deadly chemical and biological weapons, some of which he has already used on his own citizens.

His SUPPORT for the terrorists behind 9/11 and the suicide bombers who attack Israel.

Bush laid it on the line. If we ignore this evidence, we gamble recklessly with millions of lives.

It was fighting talk, tempered by recognition that removing the threat of Saddam is a common challenge, not just a go-it-alone operation by America.

We can choose between a world of fear or a world of progress, he said - but we can’t just stand by.

As Bush made clear, this is a defining moment for the UN. Unless it enforces its resolutions, it will become an irrelevance.

Likening Saddam to Hitler, Bush said world peace must never again be destroyed by one man.

To those who doubt Saddam’s threat, Bush said that on 9/11 we saw the intent of our enemies.

If Saddam provides them with nuclear weapons they will be on a short cut to their mad ambitions.

It was the most powerful piece of television ever screened. Jules and Gedeon Naudet's film of the Duane Street firefighters was unspeakably moving.

Good points. However, I get a different take. I think Bush WANTS to hear all views. They all get to speak freely but HE makes the decision and then they are required to support it. Cheney mentioned this in an interview as to his relationship with Bush.

Bush also allows Powell to do his job as he sees fit, as he does Cheney. Bush is still deciding exactly what action to take but he is using the knowledge and views of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell and Rice in gathering information.

Makes for a very well versed team and insures looking at all sides of a situation.

Doing nothing is, in a perfectly natural sense, doing "something else" other than attacking.

But then again, this is quarrel about the phrasing of a commentator's remarks that doesn't bear on anything important. If you want to insist that "something else" can mean only a resolution the U.S. doesn't want, no matter. We can just agree that the U.S. is prepared to act whether the U.N. does "something else" or does nothing, where doing nothing doesn't count as doing something other than making an ultimatum followed by an attack.

In respect to the key issue, the apparent British misunderstanding of American intentions, I would agree that the British commentators I saw, and by implication at least a significant fraction of the British audience, don't get your (1)-(3).

(2) and (3) they don't seem to understand, at least in part, because they do not appreciate the extent to which American patience with the U.N. has entirely run out. As I mentioned, one commentator seemed to think Bush's remarks as something in the way of a "position", something to discuss further, a starting point on another long and pointless "process" of inspection. I guess that's why he also thought Bush's remarks were a significant "concession".

They'll find out soon enough they're wrong about this. At least Blair understands what's what.

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