[Pokey78]

Pinging Peggy Noonan's list.

[xzins]

Peggy's off form here.

As Rumsfeld would say, as soon as the President says "Violation X is at Point Y" then the Iraqis will move it and claim it never existed.

Far better to put your claims in a sealed envelope and document their existence after you've taken your enemy down.

[Mr. Silverback]

Bump to read later

[The Great Satan]

Which gets us to tomorrow night's address. What we need this time is something bracing--such as facts, new facts, hard data.

If the American people had the hard data, Miss Noonan, they would understand that a supposedly vanquished pipsqueak Arab dictator brazenly attacked New York City and Washington, DC on September 11, 2001, inflicting $200 billion of damage on the US economy and killing 3,000 American civilians in one morning.

If the American people had the hard data, Miss Noonan, they would understand that said pipsqueak dictator has successfully deterred any commensurate retaliation by holding the American people hostage, threatening to unleash biological WMD in our major population centers, should Bush point the finger and attempt to kill him or remove him from power.

If the American people had the hard data, Miss Noonan, they would understand that Saddam survived the Persian Gulf War of 1991 by presenting a credible threat to anthrax the population of Israel, and the United States leadership, then as now, disseminated a variety of cover stories to paper over the fact that it had been successfully intimidated by a vastly weaker, Third World power.

If the American people had the hard data, Miss Noonan, they would understand that we are at least a year, and more likely several years, away from being able to back up our threats against Saddam Hussein with action, and a potentially dreadful war fought with WMDs is a very real possibility in the not-too-distant future.

And thus, Miss Noonan, you can take it to the bank that President Bush's SOTU speech next week will offer only more sanitized evasions and incrementalism, just like, when you really analyzed it, President Bush's speech to the UN last year. The thing is, Miss Noonan, when you're screwed, you are screwed. No pretty words or moral posturing will unscrew you because, at the end of the day, government is about the ability to inflict unacceptable pain on your adversaries, and that is something that our adversary, that tin-pot multi-billionaire megalomaniac gangster in Baghdad, understands very well.

[John Lenin]

The longer the rhetoric and UN nonsense goes on the worse this thing is getting. There is going to be some payback once this starts but it's going to happen sooner or later no matter what.

[The Great Satan]

I'm going to refer to a private conversation about another conversation, I hope in a good cause. Four months ago a friend who had recently met with the president on other business reported to me that in conversation the president had said that he has been having some trouble sleeping, and that when he awakes in the morning the first thing he often thinks is: I wonder if this is the day Saddam will do it. "Do what exactly?" I asked my friend. He told me he understood the president to be saying that he wonders if this will be the day Saddam launches a terror attack here, on American soil. I was surprised. We know of the arguments that Saddam is a supporter and encourager of America's terrorist enemies. We know the information that has been made available. But the president has not to my knowledge said in public that he fears Saddam himself will hit us hard on the ground in America, and soon. Maybe my friend misheard, maybe something was misunderstood. But my friend is a careful man, and I suspect he heard exactly right. Which begs the question, what does Mr. Bush know that he hasn't said about Saddam's intentions and ability to strike America?

[Russell Scott]

Many women get squishy with the idea of war. That's why in this case Peggy needs to go bake some cookies, and let President Bush, the Commander-in-Chief, handle the dirty boy in the Middle East.

[LonghornFreeper]

I think you guys are all taking this article the wrong way. She supports Bush, and the war, and never in the article does she question that Iraq has WMD, or that Bush has evidence of it. We have all heard rhetoric, we have all heard about Halabja (spelling not certain), it is time to show us evidence of why we are going to war. I don't doubt for a minute that Bush has it, but it is time for us to see it.

[Nogbad]

Ping

[RJCogburn]

Noonan is right on here. Bush still has not yet made a good case that many 'average Americans' accept. Facts, as she suggests, should do that and I anticipate Bush will be more convincing tomorrow.

Mr. Bush, as president, knows things we don't know.

I don't find that helpful one bit....the same old LBJ argument.

[Wait4Truth]

I am going to comment before reading the replies of others and I may be a minority voice on this article. That's ok with me. Peggy Noonan doesn't get it any more than many of the talking heads do - or, she is so worried that President Bush will outshine President Reagan that she is refusing to face the reality of what IS. By the way, she has been criticized in the past and to this day for not wanting anything or anyone to ever upstage her hero, President Reagan. That is a worthy goal since he is a remarkable man and was a wonderful president.

On the other hand, it may cloud her views. She has been nit-picking President Bush for awhile now. Is she afraid of something? She has taken to using psycho-babble to analyze what he thinks, why he thinks it and why he is who he is. I have been offended at some of her comments recently.

So now, she thinks he must reveal his smoking guns even if it means the lives of sources. She thinks he needs to lay all the facts on the table NOW...even if we are not militarily ready...even if the timing is not right. This is foolish. And revealing the conversation her friend had with the President was wrong.

President Bush, as she says, knows things the rest of us don't know. Yet instead of trusting him on this, she tells him what he MUST do. She wonders aloud if this is just personal with him since Saddam tried to kill his father (who just happened to be a former president of the United States). She sounds no different than the liberal talking heads and senators that say the President has made no case.

This President will do what is right when the time is right. It will not be decided on the daily polls or the opinions of France or Germany, Paul Begala, bill and hillary clinton, or tom daschle. Period.

[John O]

It leaves the world and the American people wondering if Mr. Bush isn't a little too hot, too quick on the draw, too personal in his handling of international challenges.

I think that he is far too slow on the draw. I wanted the nukes to start falling on the entire arab world on Sept 12, 2001. We knew the arab muslems did it, why are we waiting.

President Bush is fighting this war through a one country at a time cleansing process. Taking out each terrorist sponsor in order, and hopefully converting them to Christianity in the process (Ann Coulter, as always, was right). He is doing it exactly the right way.

I'm far more impatient than he is. I would have nuked them all and let God sort them out.

This war will end only when islam no longer plagues the earth. Islam is the enemy

[MattAMiller]

Noonan is right that Bush should focus on a logical factual argument. And he doesn't need to reveal anything new. All the evidence we need is in the inspector's reports. Iraq is clearly hiding something.

Right now people seem to be confused. Bush should clear up that confusion.