Brilliant Bush

The Sun (UK)

[ClancyJ]

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.

[Timm]

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.