[Dog Gone]

I'm not used to seeing such wisdom printed in the British press.

[Semper Paratus]

Christmas? I'm hoping by Yom Kippur.

[Conservative Chicagoan]

If there is a building left in Bagdad we haven't finished the job.

[McGavin999]

Fabulous article. You can recognize a good writer when he takes complex issues and makes them thoroughly understandable in a few words. This man is a good writer.

[The Great Satan]

He already possesses biological weaponry, including botulinum and anthrax. He does not yet have a missile system which could deliver a biological attack, but hideous damage could be inflicted by a single suicide agent with a suitcase.

The sentence contradicts itself. The "human missiles" the Iraqi press boasted about five years ago are here now. Prototyped against the Jews, now here in America. Everybody better let this sink in, because it changes the whole face of armed conflict.

[foreshadowed at waco]

Now that they have lost both the appetite and the capacity for power politics, the Europeans are in the grip of a contradiction. They insist that acts of war can only be justified by moral absolutes. They also insist that we live in a world of moral relativities.

The Europeans are like a continent of liberals--they refuse to see what's in front of them--their neurotic compulsion to avoid acting is probably the result of wishful thinking coupled with a fear of war based on the massive loss of life during WWI and WWII. They don't understand that if they had removed Hitler early and fast many more Europeans would have lived--they don't seem to view appeasement as a failed strategy.

[Silly]

I love the opening quote.

[Hugin]

The Americans will not be deflected by the absence of support from continental Europe. A few months ago, William Hague asked George Bush how he would deal with European objections to ballistic missile defence. ‘I’ve got a secret plan,’ Mr Bush replied. ‘What is it?’ ‘I’ll go ahead anyway.’

LOL! I missed that one back then. I love it.

[dennisw]

I would say before October to make election impact. Especially if the economy is down. Everyone loves a winner!!

[Paulie]

"...(Bush) what he says, he means..."

Yeah, like "I'm not going to fire a 2 million dollar missle into a tent and hit some camel in the butt - when I move, it's going to be DECISIVE!!"

Gotta be the greatest line of the century; certainly the decade. Remember this response to your whining BS, Hill Baby?!

[Richard Kimball]

William Hague asked George Bush how he would deal with European objections to ballistic missile defence. ‘I’ve got a secret plan,’ Mr Bush replied. ‘What is it?’ ‘I’ll go ahead anyway.’

That's a great line. It's right up there with "We're here to kick *ss and chew bubble gum, and we're all out of bubble gum.

[Tolik]

Eloquence par excellence:

...Now that they have lost both the appetite and the capacity for power politics, the Europeans are in the grip of a contradiction. They insist that acts of war can only be justified by moral absolutes. They also insist that we live in a world of moral relativities. European governments had a double quarrel with Mr Bush’s ‘axis of evil’ speech. They do not believe in the axis. Nor do they believe in the evil. They prefer to live in a world as depicted by Whistler, in which everything is a subtle symphony of endless grey. From this perspective, Saddam may be a bad man, but he is merely a darker shade of grey than Ariel Sharon.

In France, this reluctance to confront basic moral judgments is reinforced by anti-Americanism. To almost all French politicians, it is an article of faith that the world is always more complex than the Americans would have it. This aversion to moralism is also strengthened, and not only in France, by a quasi-Marxist belief that history is ultimately the interplay of economic and social forces, and that it is ridiculously old-fashioned to believe that great events are caused by great men — or by greatly evil men.

This is curious. Those who disbelieve in the motive power of evil men cannot have read much 20th-century European history.

[Travis McGee]

The force figure most widely mentioned is 250,000 men, including a significant British contribution, which has already been tacitly promised. Though no preparations have yet been announced, every regiment in the British army is desperate to be involved, while every major-general is bursting to be offered a divisional command. There is nothing risk-averse about our generals.

Thanks!

[CIB-173RDABN]

Bump from July - the points are still valid.