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.
Yes, I believe that Hussein was behind WTC I&II, as well as OKC, and probably TWA 800, among other things. And I think he has indeed threatened us with WMDs--which are probably already here.
But so are our scientists--and they are top rate. They've been working on these problems for a while. If our casualties were going to be unacceptable, we wouldn't be making noises and moving our forces.
I agree that Bush has been playing the facts close to his vest because the public outcry would have demanded action before he was ready. And the facts--at least some of them-- will be given to us when he's ready to strike--and that may be when the strike has already commenced.
I don't know why Noonan is calling for this. The fact is that anyone who wants to understand whether the attack is justified or not can look at the information that is already in the public domain. There is more than enough out there to understand that going after Hussein is necessary and worth the risk. It's too bad that the pundits don't bother to do the research before they complain.